It all began on a weekend in April in the bar of Namib Garage in Aus. Over a Windhoek Lager, Johann, a friend from Lüderitz, told me that he was organizing a boat for his colleges to participate in this year’s “Snoek Derby”. The Snoek is a hunting fish that comes to the sea around Lüderitz in the end of May and every year there is a big open Snoek fishing competition where everybody is trying to catch the fattest fish. Well, after too many Jägermeisters and Tequillas at the bar in Aus, I decided that this derby sounded pretty fun and my friend promised to put me on his boat. Together with 3 women and 13 men, three of which were friends from Aus. Back then, I didn’t know what I had gotten into.
One week before the derby (last week), Johann told us that there wasn’t enough space for the four of us. This could have meant that I wasn’t on the boat anymore; but Piet (my boss and host dad) behaved like a real Namibian gentleman and gave up his space so I could join the derby. Friday, the day before the derby, Steve gave me a lift with his old Bucky to Lüderitz. In the back of the Bucky, of course, was a cool box filled with ice cold beer. That’s when I finally realized that I was going on a real men’s weekend. And that there was no way out.
After quite a slow, loud and hot ride through the stunning mountains, wide desert plains and the moon-like scenery just before Lüderitz, we arrived at the sea around midday. Coming from Aus where it had been freezing cold during the last week, it felt like arriving in a whole other country when I stepped out of the car. At the sea, the sun was burning, the air smelt like sea water and people were walking around in shorts. In Aus, we had been sitting inside our offices wearing gloves, scarves, jackets and pullovers and still freezing, and that being only an hour’s drive away!
The day before
The three of us from Aus (Steve, Danie and I) stayed at Johann’s place. The first thing Johann said to me was that there was not enough space for me on his boat but that he would try to find me a space on another boat somehow. That was the second time I thought I wouldn’t get to spend 8 hours on the high seas. Later that day, my three companions and I went to a get-together of all fishermen (and women) at the “Yachtclub” which I had heard a lot about before. Especially, many stories involving excessive amounts of Jägermeister. The Yachtclub was unbelievably full; I hadn’t seen so many people in one closed place since I had come to Namibia. In a corner of the club, you could see all the prizes for the derby: TV screens, cool boxes, T-shirts and huge cheques (20 thousand dollars for the winner!). Locals were checking out the prizes and already discussing who would catch the heaviest Snoek. After some pints, Johann eventually found me a boat- luckily, I already knew the captain “José”: a Portuguese sea bear from Lüderitz. I was overjoyed and again realized how friendly and ready people are here to lend a hand for others. After these good news, we were hungry for some grilled meat, so we went back to the flat, turned on Dani’s CD of “Afrikaans” pop songs and had a good big “Braai” in the yard- with Boerewors, Mielipap with tomato-onion sauce and a good piece of steak. As we had to get up at 3.30 the next morning, we went to bed pretty early- stuffed with food and a anti-puking tablets against sea-sickness.
The big day
The alarm rang at 3.30 sharp- far too early to get up. However, I smelt coffee from the kitchen and heard “wake-up” music, so I got up. Soon after, a huge crowd of fishermen in green and orange plastic suits was walking through the nightly streets of Lüderitz. I’m sure we must have looked pretty scary to the people who came home from parties at that time. Or maybe not to everybody - one guy came lurching over to some green fishermen, smiling mischievously and said “I don’t catch fish, I catch men!” On our boat “Little Meha”, I met my fishing companions – a nice mix of people from Lüderitz and all of them were experienced fishermen. Fortunately, there also was another woman on the boat who never went fishing before, so at least it was two of us. We left the harbor at 5 am and floated out into the pitch dark sea. With the Little Meha, about 35 other boats started their journey out into the deep. Around 6 am, the sun started rising and just before sunrise, our boat stopped the first time for a fishing session.
José, the captain, used a machine that registers the fish under water through the echoes the fish created. So every time, the machine projected a crowd of fish under the sea, Little Meha stopped and everybody hysterically started to throw out their fishing lines. The first few sessions, I just watched how the whole process worked: Everybody had a fishing line of about 60 meters fixed to the side of the boat with a plastic lure at the end of it which was thrown out into the sea. As soon as all the line was under water, you had to quickly pull the line back in. As the fishing lines were quite sharp, we were wearing plasters and plastic tubes on our fingers. Nevertheless, many people were bitten by the Snoeks they caught and their extremely sharp teeth caused strong bleeding. Helmut, southwester German fisherman showed me that the slime of a Snoek’s eye actually stops the bleeding. I first had to get used to watching the fishermen hauling up the huge Snoeks, lifting them by grabbing through their eyes, squeezing the strongly fighting fish between their legs and breaking their necks with a loud “CRACK”! At some point, I even thought my anti-puking tablets might do their job but after a while, the site of bloody fish and the sound of cracking necks became perfectly normal to me. Now the big question was whether I would catch a Snoek myself… Unfortunately, I have to disappoint you here- I wasn’t lucky. Even though, the people on board gave me helpful advice and provided me with their best fishing equipment, not one single Snoek wanted to bite my lure. Apparently, the Snoek is attracted by the fast moving lure that is pulled out by fishermen- which is why I tried my best to pull the line out extremely quickly. And even without ever having had a fish at the end of it, my arms started hurting after a while. Anyways, this way of fishing was great fun as it involved a lot of physical movement and nice relaxing breaks in between when the captain searched for the next fishing spot.
During these breaks, we sat in the sun, enjoyed the site of the endless sea and the yellow dunes you could see in the distance, cold beers and talked about the weather and the fish. I would never have thought that I could spend eight hours at the sea without getting sick. But after a while, I just got used to the wavy up and down of the boat and even managed to walk very short distances without holding onto something and without falling on the ground.
In general, I was amazed and inspired by the power and vastness of the sea and by the passion with which the fishermen work. The fact that I didn’t catch anything didn’t matter at all because the experience I made was incomparable. Besides, Helmut (another of those Namibian gentlemen) insisted on giving me one of his fish. At 1 pm sharp, the boat radio said “Lines Up” and everybody had to stop fishing immediately and pull out the lines. So that was the sign for us to go back to the harbor where we arrived about one hour later.
Back on land
When we had finally arrived back at the harbor, there was already a huge line up of fishermen in front of the Yachtclub, waiting to get their Snoek weighted. Nobody from my boat weighted their Snoek, because our fish weren’t nearly as fat as those from other boats. However, our boat DID join the get-together at Yachtclub and celebrated the day with several pints of draught beer. Even though I was the only one on my boat who didn’t catch anything, I found out that Steve, Danie and Johann also didn’t catch one single Snoek. Fortunately, there was enough fish to make a nice big barbeque caught outside the club while the prizes were awarded inside. As a great surprise, a boy of only 13 years had caught the biggest fish of 5.3 kilogram’s and therefore won the 20 thousand dollars. When I asked what we would do with all this money he said that he would safe it. His mother told me that she wasn’t sure anymore if this was really her son.
As everybody had gotten up horribly early that morning, people were heading back home surprisingly early. Back at Johann’s place, I already smelled the firewood for the final Braai. This wonderful day was rounded up with a real men’s meal- a huge piece of juicy, fat-dripping and well spiced rips. No vegetables, no plates, no forks. And I have to say, I really enjoyed it. Well, later that evening Johann said that only peeing while standing kept me from being a real man- yet I rather refused to go along with this challenge and stayed a woman.
When I got up the next morning at 7 am and saw Steve and Johann opening their first beers and eating the rest of the rips, I realized that the anti-puking pills were definitely not working anymore and that there was more than peeing while standing which prevented me from being a real man. Happy and exhausted from the weekend at the sea, with my Snoek in the back of the Bucky, an empty cool box and unforgettable memories, we drove back on Sunday and thought back at the incredible experience we made.
