Friday, July 24, 2009

One day to go...

Today we had the pleasure of spending the day with some really great guys from our neck of the woods, joining Dan and Sean Lester from Monterey Bay Anglers for a day on the water. What made it even more special is that we got to spend the day on board the Kila Kila, a magnificently appointed 53' Merritt. Captain Teddy Hoogs and Mate Josh Bunch provided a really wonderful experience -- despite the fact that we just couldn't seem to find fish!













Another bunch of locals, the Pajaro Valley Game Fish club #1, got out a tag on a nice marlin, fishing aboard the Long Ranger.













And the New Britain Game Fishing Club out of Papua New Guinea also helped us out by getting out a tag as well, on board the Strong Persuader.

That brings us up to a total of seven tags in the water -- leaving us with three to place tomorrow. To hedge our bets, we'll be putting each tag on a different boat, and crossing our fingers that we all get at least one shot!




2 comments:

  1. Randy,

    Hope you had a good time in Kona. I videotaped the HIBT event & uploaded a short video to YOUTUBE. It includes a short section on the Great Marlin Race (including your website which isn't working). I mentioned the winner is the marlin that travels the "most" distance. Can you clerify. I think it's probably the marlin that swims the longest distance from Hawaii during the 180 day period as opposed to distance at the end of the 180 day period. It wouldn't make any sense for a marlin not to win if it swam around the world in 180 days but was in Hawaii at the end of the race. Please let me know the winning marlin criteria. You might want to post a comment on the Youtube video. You can find it by searching HIBT GARYTROW.

    Aloha,
    Gary

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  2. Hi Gary! Thanks for your comments! I'm concerned that the site isn't working for you -- It looks fine here. Once you put in www.greatmarlinrace.org, try hitting "reload" on your browser and see if that works. Something seems to be hinky with the redirect.

    Regarding the "winner," we decided to keep it really simple - the winning fish is determined by the greatest distance from the point where it was tagged (just off Kona) to the point where its tag pops off.

    Although it is possible that a fish could swim around the world and back to Hawaii in 180 days and lose, the positions where the fish is tagged and where the tag is released are accurate to within 100m. The positions in between are based on light curves -- and as such can be subject to human judgement (and human error!) -- especially in cases where a point on the track may or may not be spurious.

    So although we'll share information about the tracks, the diving behavior, etc., the official race winner will be determined by a simple straight line distance between points.

    Take care,

    Randy

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