Crossing to the Galapagos – fishing boats in th e night

Nusquama Sailing Blog
Sun 18 Feb 2024 19:22

 

An eventful night – about 175 NM from Galapagos Sam was on watch, so it would have been about 3.00 am.  He called us up on deck as he could see we had caught loads of fishing line under our boat – it looked like it was under the rudders and round the prop which is pretty serious.  He and Clem had been watching strange red and white lights to starboard – almost certainly fishing boats, but not on the AIS, apart from one which came up as ‘Antonio05’.  We lost our steering for a while and sat marooned trying to figure out what to do next.  We freed one rudder and found the propeller to be clear so could motor slowly (no wind) until dawn.  We think we must have gone over one of the giant unlit fish traps left to draw fish to the area.  In the morning ‘Antonio04’ came past checking we were ok.

 

Everything is always better in the daylight.  We had fantastic Cinnamon Rolls from the freezer bought in Panama Carrefour to cheer us up in the morning – perfect.  Patrick used the recycled fishing gear as his Neptune necklace, beautifully fabricated by Clem.


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