Ship’s Log September 28th 2014
We left the Charleston boat harbor at 2pm with 7 days worth of supplies. We had 5 tons of ice in the fish hold, 300 gallons of fuel, plenty of chum, and lots of great food.
The sea was calm and the sky was clear. I took a heading SW toward a good looking water temperature pocket approximately 60 miles from port. We made decent time and as we entered the fishing zone the water warmed up from 59 to 60 then quickly to 62 degrees. I saw what I was looking for which was a lot of bait and some great marks on the sonar which indicated tuna. It was nearly Midnight. We put out our stabilizers, shut the boat down, climbed down into our cozy bunks and went to sleep. We were adrift in a calm sea and both of us were looking forward to our first fishing day of the trip, planning to get up before sunrise, put the jigs out and start to load up on tuna.
As the captain, I sleep lightly, and tonight I heard the familiar sound of whales as they exhaled their air while circling the boat. Whales have always had a calming effect on me, like giant cattle, docile, easy going and quite magnificent. Tonight turned out to be a different situation entirely when the sound of an exhale was so loud that I sat upright and knew immediately that the whale was too close to the side of the boat, and too close to the top of the water at that moment it could not possibly get past our starboard stabilizer without some sort of interaction with it.
The stabilizer is a heavy metal finned object which hangs down from approximately halfway out on our “fishing” poles. They are attached with thick heavy line and stainless steel chain, and go down into the water about 12 feet, acting against the waves, one on each side of the boat in order to keep the vessel from rocking back and forth sideways therefore “stabilizing” the vessel.
At the moment the whale connected to the stabilizer I yelled over to Chris and woke him up. The whale sort of groaned out a distress signal which we clearly heard at the same instant, and the boat listed to starboard. I was up out of my bunk and so was Chris. Down in the sleeping area our heads are approximately water level, so the sounds of the whale were quite clear as it struggled with the stabilizer. I told Chris to just relax and hang on, something was going to give. There was a very loud crashing smashing busting sound, the boat righted itself and all was calm again. We climbed up through the cabin and out onto the deck. I looked over and in the moonlight I saw exactly what I had feared the most—the 36 foot “fishing pole” was snapped in half and all the stays for that pole were bent, broken, floating in the sea or hanging down into the water.
I flipped on the deck light and got a better look. The light illuminated the sea. We could clearly see all the bait circling around the boat. At the edge of the light we could see a large number of sharks flipping their tails while turning through the schools of bait. It was a very surreal experience. Chris was in a bit of a panic, turning in circles and he kept looking for his cell phone. I was in awe and was calming Chris, letting him know there was no danger. All of a sudden the whales reappeared, right next to the boat again. Chris and I were standing on the deck next to the mast and the whales, one of which was much longer and thicker than our fishing vessel and one about half of its size, were exhaling and cruising along the stern. We were able to kind of have a conversation while their backs were out of the water for what seemed like forever. We kept saying, “Wow we could go back there and just step out onto the back of that big one.” We were able to repeat that phrase a couple of times during the long period of time that it took for the tail to finally come up and sort of graze the edge of the stern.
I told Chris, “OK fine, pull that other stabilizer so that it does not get into that one too.”
Then we pulled the broken half of our wooden pole out of the water, gathered all the lines and the stays and tied up everything as best as we could, went into the cabin, pulled the start switch and we drove about 5 miles away. Chris found his phone and started texting, and we talked about going home the next day and the trip was a bust etc. etc.
BUT…The next day on the way back home I decided to put some gear out on the good side, and then I started to put some gear out on the bad side. I told Chris the heck with it, let’s go fishing. So we did. We ended up with about half of a great catch, fishing with one stabilizer and one fishing pole in what turned out to be very rough seas, the pull on only one side of the vessel killed my auto pilot.
But again, what the heck. We got enough tuna to pay for all the repairs, autopilot included, and the fuel and supplies as well.
It was a great trip.
Fishpatrick