Another one - my friend & I were reminiscing about this one the other night over brews:
It's about 18 nautical miles (nm) to get from the mainland to a local island - and a good spot for lobster!
. Getting there means crossing the inside Anacapa Passage shipping lanes north and south. It is astounding just how fast a big container ship can move! We were aboard my friend's 17ft Boston Whaler motoring to the eastern tip of Santa Cruz island when we spotted a north bound ship out on the horizon. A brief discussion and we decided that we would not be in the ship's path, so we motored on, keeping an eye on the little box shaped ship still on the horizon.
15 minutes later, the "little box" was now more like a building, and we could clearly see that it was fully loaded with hundreds of thousands of tons in steel containers. We also noted a large wake, indicating the ship was at full throttle (about 35 knots / 40 mph). But it was still far off, and we were already in the shipping lane, so we figured that we would cross in front of it by a few miles.
A few more minutes and the ship was a hulking behemoth (POTCO pun intended! :arrrrr: ) that absolutely dominated our view. We could hear and feel the monstrous engine's drone and observe dolphin in the ship's foamy bow wave. After a VERY brief conversation (more of a directional nod, really), we elected to run behind the beast instead of foolishly charging in front of it, especially since we both know that the ship wouldn't be able to even slow itself down for about 50 miles, much less stop for us! As we pulled along the side of the ship to let it pass by, their loudspeaker crackled to life.
"Good decision, Whaler"https://piratesforums.co/file:///Users/Rick/Desktop/Afterburner.jpeg
Earlier this summer, we had my family aboard my parent's 33ft sloop on a beautiful day. Small swell, and a nice even breeze about 15kts had us moving along about 8kts. On our way back to port, we were overtaken by the 51ft racing catamaran "Afterburner", going about 20kts. If you look at the pic - there are four guys on the flying hull (the orange stripe laying across the deck is one). Also, you can just see the daggerboard below the airborne side. That board drafts 7 ft when the hull is in the water - gives a good perspective of how big the cat is. I met the Capt. recently and have been trying to get on their crew as a substitute when one of their's is out.
2012-09-28 21:30 (9:30pm)
I was a last minute addition to a hoop-netting boat targeting crab & lobster
. I've shaken hands with the owner of the boat (a 14' Boston Whaler style boat - very nice!) once or twice, and my friend vouched for my seamanship, so I'm on the launch ramp of the Channel Islands harbor helping out with last minute prep:
Rigging and prepping crab pots (hoop nets), stacking them on the foredeck, checking boat drains & scuppers, rigging and stowing anchor, tending the boat while my host parks his truck, etc.
The night is warm, all I need is my hoodie for now, but I have foul weather gear in my backpack for later, when the fog rolls in and everything gets wet. The moon is full and rising, there's a slight breeze out of the NW - what a beautiful night to be on the water! We motor the little boat out to the breakwall of the harbor where we'll fish - too rough to go around to the outside, so we begin baiting our traps with mackerel, anchovies and ---- a can of catfood with holes punched (I know - ewwwww! but it works!).
22:00 (10pm) As we begin dropping our pots at 40 ft intervals (red glow sticks on the floats to mark them), another boat shows up and begins setting their traps, and another, and another.......(This is turning into Abassa server, hope nobody lags!
). We watch as more, and more boats arrive, some setting their pots right on top of ours - that might require some words when we go to retrieve those. We've decided on a 2 hour soak for the first round, so we anchor at the top of our string and wait.
2012-09-29 00:00 (12:00am) - 2012 California Lobster season officially opens
(note: we're allowed to drop our gear overboard before midnight, but can't touch it again until the stroke of 00:00)
Our first pot breaks the surface and we find it FILLED with Rock Crab! Not our target species, but tasty, so we start sorting the keepers from the shorts. Just as we re-bait & rig the first trap, we arrive at the second. It surfaces just like the 1st - about 30 Rock Crab, but not bugs (lobster), We drop the fresh trap overboard, sort and re-rig the second. The third pot is tangled with the other boat's - they literally set on top of us! Words I won't repeat here are exchanged,
and we move on. We reach the tenth and final pot of our string - we've taken our limit of Rock Crab (105 for the boat - all three of us have our personal limit of 35), Threw back a few Sheep Crab (one MONSTER size - they aren't a species we want to keep), but no lobster yet. We head back to the head of the string and repeat - now we're exchanging smaller crab for larger. FINALLY - as a pot clears the water we hear the tell-tale "thump, thump thump!" of a decent sized lobster!
After two more rounds, it's nearly 03:00, we're tired of crab, and we're not getting any lobster. So we head back to the dock. After cleaning and re-rigging the boat, we processed our catch - 5.6 pounds of crab meat for each of us, and the lobster goes to the capt.
Not bad!
This is a shot of our boat at Prisoner's Harbor, Santa Cruz Island.
It was taken while returning to the boat on a kayak after a fun hike on the island.
