Well, after what three months we have solved the control problems witht he FAT CAT and decided to take her for a sail fishing trip. This time of the year is rainy season in Guatemala, the weather reports on Friday and Saturday were typically grim. Rain, rain and more rain.
Being a 13 year resident of Guatemala and knowing that 90% of the weather reports are set up specifically for Guatemala City I had my doubts, I called the coast and confirmed the wether on the coast was clear with no rain all day Saturday. Combined with the urgent and pressing need to get out and get the boat fishing we choose to go with my "experience".
Sunday morning in Guatemala city was exactly as the reports the day before had predicted "rain", nevertheless we headed for the coast. The rains stopped at Esquintla which is about an hour away from Puerto Quetzal where Pez Vella is located, by the time we got to the Marina everything was dry.
At the marina, the first thing we noticed was a steady 15-20 kt wind blowing straight into the marina. We offered our days guests, the Pauls, dramamine which they turned down and then headed out. At the port entrance to the ocean we started getting into a chop with swells short and close together. Another boat, a 31 foot Bertram, had already turned around due to the rough weather and was headed back to the marina. We asked our guests and they agreed that they were game so we slowed FAT CAT down and headed out to a dreary cloudy day with the wind and waves making for a potencially rough day.
FAT CAT lived up to her design and handled beautifully, the Pauls were comfortable and enjoyed a smooth ride out to the "corte" which was at about ten miles out. The "corte" is a trash line which forms off the coast during the rainy season.
We droped the lines into the water and immediately hooked up to a small dorado, then another a few minutes later. At this point we decided to head out another ten miles or so for some sailfishing. But before heading out, we droped the sabiki rods into a school of blue runners and in about 15 minutes had a box full of liveys. We got to the blue water droped the lines in saw three sails raise to the baits but they didn't bite.
Listening to the raidio it was apparent that the day was not turning out to be a very good sailfishing day and Dorado seemed to be dominating the radio talk.
On the way back to the Corte, we encountered a huge splash off the starboard side of the boat caused by something jumping, no one initially saw it, we just just heard and saw the spectacular splash. While we were asking what the xxx it was, the whale jumped again, straight up rolling over onto its back, it looked to be about 50 feet long and from the belly marking I assumed it was a small humpback. The whale came up for two more equally spectacular encores, each time just as awesome.. Sea World eat your hearts out!
We got back to the corte and hooked up more dorado including a couple nice 20 pounders. We tried some live bait trolling but this proved uncomfortable with the swell so we stuck with trolling ballyhoo.
Everyone had a great day, by the end of the day the sun had come out and the wind had died down to a more comfortable 10kts. Before heading in we stoped the boat and everyone jumped into the water to cool off, newly refreshed we headed in and finshed the day still talking of the dorado and the incredible whale.