The wahoo hit the line at seven forty-five in the morning on day eleven of the Atlantic crossing. We were eleven days out of Las Palmas, approximately halfway between the Canary Islands and Barbados, in the specific stretch of the trade wind Atlantic where the flying fish concentrate and where the wahoo follow them. The reel went and the boat came alive in the way the boat comes alive when the reel goes, everyone on deck within two minutes, the helm reducing sail speed, the line being worked by the member closest to the rod when the strike happened.
The wahoo is the fastest fish in the ocean. It runs hard when it is hooked and it fights with the specific combination of the speed and the strength that makes the twenty-minute fight the twenty minutes that the eleven people watching remember. When it comes aboard it is the silver-blue of the open ocean fish, the colouring of the pelagic species that lives in the blue water far from any coast. It weighs fourteen kilos. It is enough for twelve people for dinner with enough left over for the following morning’s breakfast.
The Preparation
The wahoo is a lean, firm-fleshed fish, the texture that holds the grill without falling apart and that takes the lime and the chili without being overwhelmed by them. The marinade is simple because the fish does not need complexity: fresh lime juice, the chili that the provisioning from Las Palmas included, a little garlic, the olive oil, the sea salt. Twenty minutes.
The grill on the stern of the Eighty2 over the open Atlantic at eleven in the morning with the trade wind behind the boat and the fish that was in the water two hours ago above the coals.
The wahoo comes off the grill with the lime char and the chili heat and the specific sweetness of the pelagic fish that has been eating flying fish in the open ocean for the duration of its life and that has the flavour of the deep water in its flesh. It is served with the rice and the salad from the provisioning and the bread that was baked that morning.
Twelve people eat it at the outdoor table with the Atlantic in every direction and the trade wind filling the sails overhead. There is no restaurant at this latitude. There is this meal, on this day, on this boat, in the middle of the ocean that produced it. It is the best wahoo any of them will eat. Not because of the technique. Because of where it was eaten and how it arrived at the table.
