A danger to mariners?

South Pacific Familyadventure 2008
Claes Brodin
Sun 21 May 2017 10:26
Both along the Spanish and the Portuguese coastline there are areas with loads of fishinggear spread out at sea. According to most pilots they are mainly to be found withing 3(5)Nm from the shoreline. Taking this as a fact I have set my routes and waypoints at least 5Nm off the shoreline. Heading for Oporto I was 10Nm from shore and still met loads of fishinggear. At least twice I ran over fishingbouys I was not aware of. Fortunately nothing happened and I guess the problem comes if there´s a rope floating beside the bouymarker in which case there´s a risk to wrapp it into the propeller (or the paravanes).I must have hit several of these bouymarkers during the night without knowing......
Nevertheless weather circumstances improved as predicted and the passage along the Portuguese coast to Oporto became a comfortable pleasure.

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