Fishing Tournaments are really not my piece of cake but the one in Puerto Banús is quite unique, believe me. This port near Marbella holds the biggest fleet of super yachts of the Spanish coast. It used to be the base for many of the richest Arab kings and oil businessman and is a place where you breathe and smell wealth. Due to the large quantity of Yachts and extremely fashionable cars, Banus has become a main tourist point of Andalusia, where people come just to see those beauties and dream for one day. Is probably futile and materialistic but if Las Vegas has a reason to exist so Banus does. It is also a nice town, that must be said, and the nightlife, that develops mostly around the port, is quite exciting. For the sake of the truth I also have to mention the abundance of stunning females who help "decorating" the great scenario, even though this will probably cost me a punch on my neck.... 
Well, I was there, invited by the "alma mater" of the Tournament, Mr Jorge Haenelt (in the picture, at the weighting station), a truly nice gentleman who runs this big event every year since quite a long time, 12 years I'd say. Jorge knows a thing or two about running a competition of this size and saying that everything went flawless is an understatement. My mission was to give a speech after the first day of the tournament and then follow the event for a fishing magazine. I did my duties and covered the event, even here, in this humble blog, you'll find some bits and pieces about the competition. On day one Red Herring, a beautiful 40 Cabo Express, in my humble opinion the nicest boat around, weighted the heaviest load of catch, 36,850kg with the biggest fish of the Tournament, a 14,550kg Dorado. Alila was good second, with just a couple of kilos difference and El Barracuda came third a bit further behind. The weather during the days was near to perfect, with calm seas and very hot temperature.
Day two was Nanis landing the biggest load with 26,200kg coming from 5 fish, all Skipjacks. Cap Cana, the team from the Dominican Republic grabbed the second place and El Barracuda came third again, for sure the most regular team of the tournament (not counting those who DID NOT catch any fish for two days in a row... ! ). A bit of wind showed up in the morning to drop again in the afternoon, again a wonderful day to be out at sea. 
The final result, as far as total amount of catch is concerned, was in favour of Ian John Dixon's "Red Herring" , the team that won most of the available awards (there were many of them available). This is the men to beat next year, and I hope I will be there again to see it. There's many nice people I met and at the most glamorous fishing tournament of Spain, and I long to see them again.
No comments:
Post a Comment