Tuna!

Last week, for the first time ever, our schedule and Kevin's worked out that the kids and I were able to get out to Westport on a day that Kevin came in from sea to sell his load of tuna. It was lots of fun and a great experience for the kids to get to see the whole unloading process and understand a little more of what their Daddy does. Jake was especially excited to see Daddy since it'd been just over two weeks since he was last home. In the picture below, Jake is pointing to a sea lion swimming around the docks.

Once on Daddy's boat, the first order of business was to check out the tuna in the fish hold. All 12.5 tons of them!!

As we waited for the call that it was our turn to head over to the unloading dock, we ate some lunch (the kids insisted on having hot dogs on the boat since that's what we did last year :) and then the kids explored the boat. Well, actually Ben stayed in the galley, Jake kept wanting to be brought by the fish hold to get peeks at the "tuna!" and Abby explored and played. She was quick to jump into the rack with Kevin. The rack is where the deckhands stand with their poles to fish for the tuna and it actually sticks out from the back of the boat over the water. I was surprised at how comfortable Abby was in it. In fact, she was excited about everything and even asked her Daddy if she could be "one of his fishermen someday." I don't even want to THINK about my precious little darling heading out to sea!

Playing with the little anchovies swimming around in the live bait tank was probably the biggest draw for the kids throughout the afternoon. They spent hours grabbing, holding, poking, throwing, and netting the bait. Jake even wanted a turn but was a little unsure when Daddy handed him the fish and it wiggled around in his hand. :)

Here the kids are watching as we pulled up to the dock where they unload the tuna.

For an hour and half, they filled up this tote over and over and the crane lifted it up to the dock. 12.5 tons of tuna takes awhile to unload!

Ben took a bit longer to warm up to the bait fish, but after he got tired of watching the tuna being unloaded, he too was trying to net fish and then he threw them in the water like a good chummer (when the boat is bait fishing for tuna, one deckhand's job is to toss the live anchovies into the water to stir the tuna into a feeding frenzy and then they start biting the hooks better).

It was a really fun time for everyone. And when Daddy didn't get home until 9pm that night (he stayed longer then we did to finish up some boat work) and then was off before we all awoke at 5am the next morning for another tuna trip, we were very glad we went even if just to be able to spend the time with Kevin! :o)

(There are tons more pictures I posted on facebook if you are interested. :)