“Let’s catch some fish for dinner”
“Great I’ll sort the boat”
We set off in the small fibreglass with the 25hp engine, we just got to the east of the island and there, 20ft from the cliffs was an octopus boat (that’s not a boat shaped like an octopus or a boat driven by an octopus, it’s a boat with people catching octopuses). It should have been 200m off our shore, but what’s a couple of hundred meters between friends. So me and Sal confidently take our boat close to theirs and say, in a friendly manner you’re much too close. Well, the 2 people in the boat said “huh” looked away from us and carried on fishing and the chap in the water chucked another couple of octopuses in their boat. Sal, in sensed by their lack of respect for the warden of Aride said “right” got out her camera and took their photo. Bad move. I was amazed at how quick belligerence can turn to aggression.
The one who looked in charged started shouting (in Creole) and I’m now slightly worried. They pull the other chap into the boat and come towards us, luckily I never switched off the engine and I kept our distance, the shouting man was really shouting now and getting closer. If they get to close and throw their anchor into our boat we’re knackered. Now we’re starting to shit ourselves. So as always the discretion and valour old bollocks comes into play and we leg it!
They gave chase. Both boats had 25hp engines but we were lighter, 2 of us to 3 of them and a ton of octopuses so they couldn’t make up any ground on us, it was who had the most fuel or determination. We kept circling the island with them 500m behind, luckily the rangers saw that was happening and launched our tornado with 5 staff. They stopped, and we used the tornado as a shield and let the shouting man catch us up, he was not a happy bunny, as we pirouetted around the tornado he was shouting his head off and our rangers were desperately trying to calm him down. After quite some time he either got a sore throat or got fed up and just left.
Well, I thought I did bloody well to keep the distance between the two of us, with them weaned on the water and me all of 3hrs experience, I still got a smack on the head for letting them “get to bloody close”.
This was a few months ago, and I’ve seen shouting man several times fishing legitimately since then, I always get the same reaction form him, arm out straight finger pointing and the shouting “hulla bulla hulla bulla” of course it’s not hulla bulla but that’s what it sounds like. I’ve never bothered to get it translated, because I know it’s bound to be about my parentage and what he’s going to do to certain parts of my body.
Last week on a shopping trip to Praslin we came out of a shop and there was shouting man across the other side of the track. I quickly went through all the permutations in my head, i.e. should we turn around and pretend not to have seen him, buy him a beer, smack him over the head with the shopping bag. I thought no you b_____d your going to talk to me! so I put on my friendliest smile, walked over to him, put my face right in his, stuck out my hand and said “how’s the fishing buddy”. I defiantly caught him off guard, what could he do, I had the big smile and the hand out stretched so he had to take it, he did, and said “yaa fishing gud” He seemed to find it all very amusing( to my relief ) and after he shook hands with me and Sal, he left, phew.
When I see shouting man next time fishing, if he still is shouting man, my tactic will be to moon at him, or perhaps we’ve pushed are luck too far with him already, we’ll see.
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