Dodging through fishing fleets
Anastasia
Phil May and Andrea Twigg
Fri 21 Oct 2011 23:45
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35:08.9N 6:52.2W
We had a good wind for the Gibraltar Straits, with
the Parasailor up and hitting 16 knots on the surf. We have an AIS
transmitter which meant that we could safely follow the main shipping lane and
all the cargo ships knew how to avoid us well in advance. The only
slightly challenging bit was exiting the straits, where we had to cut down from
the exit of the East-West lane across the entrance to the West-East
lane. We still had our spinnaker up and so we needed to cross at a
narrow angle which meant approaching the ships fairly head on. We were
called up on the radio by one 1000 foot container ship approaching us at 20
knots who asked what our intention was, but I explained that we didn't want to
change course and he was OK to steer around us. The AIS gave him our
name, speed and direction so he knew exactly how to contact us, and
exactly how to avoid us once he knew we would not be changing
direction.
We had to take the Parasailor down in a bit of a
hurry when we saw some people on a small fishing boat waving frantically and
realized that they had deployed a huge net that we were about to run in
to. The net must have been a mile long, held up at intervals by
buoys. We had to turn through a right angle, which collapsed the
spinnaker and left it flogging in the side-wind. We then dumped it
unceremoniously onto the trampoline with Ian and Bertie sitting on it to hold it
down while we sorted out the lines and stowed it away.
We have just had another interesting encounter with
a fishing fleet at night. They tend to fish in packs, spread out
across a few miles, so it is not always feasible to go around them all, but they
rarely have AIS and by the time you are close enough to see their
lights and determine direction you may also be close enough to snag their
nets. In this case there was a rogue that broke from the
pack and started fishing in the opposite direction to the rest of the
fleet. We did a couple of 180 degree turns before worked out what he was
doing and the best way to get around him.
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