This 19 kg yellow-fin tuna was the heaviest fish we ever caught. We use a simple handline for fishing and Christian pulled the big guy in within 5 minutes (no endless fighting and torturing like people with professional fishing gear seem to enjoy). Christian usually just grabs the swivel of the metal leader to hoist fish up to Pitufa’s high stern, but in this case we strapped a gaff hook to the rear end of our boat hook, otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to get him up… Fortunately tuna aren’t big fighters, so it was fairly easy to kill the big fish and let it bleed out.
Smurfy was watching us all the time, inspected the monster-fishy with fascination and was of course the first to get a piece–the only way to get his paws out of the bloody mess and continue cleaning and chopping up the fish.
Whenever we catch a bigger fish, Christian chops thick pieces (about 8 cm, just as long as the ceramic knife I use) still on the aft deck and I then take over in the galley, cutting off skin, bones and bloody bits. In this case it took me about 3 hours: I filled 12 jars to be processed in the pressure cooker and that still left us with 3 plastic boxes (2 kg each) full of sashimi-quality meat to finish between the three of us (Smurfy manages almost the same amount as we do) over the next 8 days (that’s as long as we trust fish in the fridge). About 2 kilos of red, bloody meat went to the stray cats of Taro 
When I tell people that we eat fish for lunch and dinner for over a week, I usually don’t get the excited reaction I expect, but a mixture of pity and disgust. Maybe they think we just keep munching an endless repetition of burgers and fish and chips?!
So here’s the menu Christian and I had for our tuna festival. Smurfy thinks cooking ruins fish, so he got sashimi three times a day instead 
1 dinner: seared tuna with wasabi mayonnaise and crackers
2 lunch: carpaccio (with capers, ginger, spring onions)
2 dinner: seared tuna steaks in a creamy carrot and spring onion sauce with rice
3 lunch: tuna burgers
3 dinner: sashimi with rice
4 lunch: spicy ceviche (raw fish with lemon juice and chilis, we added papaya, cucumber, spring onions and spinach greens)
4 dinner: hot Indian tandoori tuna and eggplant in roti flat-bread
5 lunch: tuna salad with cocktail-sauce
5 dinner: poisson cru with rice (French Poly national dish raw fish in coconut, we do a spicier version with ginger, chilis and veg)
6 lunch: tuna sandwiches
6 dinner: Thai curry with rice noodles
7 lunch: tuna dip with tacos
7 dinner: Japanese-style teriyaki tuna steaks with rice
8 lunch: tuna wraps
8 dinner: Indian tuna curry (palau masala) with spicy sweet potatoes + banana chutney
