All's well... or they happen in threes
Moondancer
Sat 29 Nov 2008 14:43
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After yesterday's dorado we were keen to be fishing
again, and were somewhat delayed this morning by the minor matter of getting our
spinnaker up, this was accomplished perhaps for the first time without the
slightest hitch.
The boat was settled down and the rods out, twenty
minutes later I noticed our duogen, a towed propellor driven generator, attached
to our transom, jumping around and saw that it had picked up a large rope, two
seconds later both rods went off with a double strike. We lifted the duogen and
saw that the rope was streaming from behind the boat, it had just been knocking
the duogen. We also saw that it was no ordinary rope but a six inch anchor warp,
actually better than a smaller rope as less likely to twist round anything. So
we had two fish on and had a potentially serious problem with the
rope.
We got the 40 feet of trailing rope in the boat
with its other end still attached somewhere beneath us, and I was ready
to let the fish go when Andrew said no, he had control of the boat,
get them in. I looked and he had the boat hove to under spinnaker with the
spinnaker backed between the pole and forestay. One fish then detached
itself, in fact the line parted, the other we got to the boat and lifted it
onto the transom step. It was about a 35 pound dorado, too heavy to
get over the rail on the first attempt, and as the tension was off the line
the hook had come free and it wriggled off the gaff and away to
freedom.
Meanwile another 80 feet of the heavy rope had
appeared being towed behind the other side of the transom, plan A was
obvious cut the short end in the boat throw it over and hope the drag of
the longer length would pull it all free. I soon gave up using the knife shown
in the picture but after five minutes with a hacksaw was through the rope.
The cut end was slid into the water and for once plan A worked and we
were free. No fish, one lure lost, but a potential major problem
averted. Obviously no pictures of the fish but here is the one that
did not get away. When the rope was gone it was obvious that the reason
everything happened at once was that the dorado had been feeding on the myriad
crabs living on the rope, many of which were left scuttling about our
deck.
 I turned to Andrew and said ' that was very
impressive I have never before seen a boat hove to under spinnaker'
His answer.. 'neither have
I'
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