| Author | Message | ||
     Captpete |
The fishing out here hasn’t been anything to write home about. But I finally got my crew situation together, and that should make things easier. Got a good picture the other day, as we were leaving the dock on the way to the fishing grounds.  | ||
| Ocbueller |
After reading your posts over the years, I was hoping for a more impressive operation.  SteveH | ||
| Captpete |
Actually, I'm a little embarrassed by the picture. I never noticed the line hanging overboard when I posted it. Unprofessional as hell! I aspire to higher standards. | ||
| Road_thing |
Trim needs a little work... rt | ||
| Jackbequick |
The trim is okay for the situation. If you can't get it up to planing speed the best option is to try to minimize the amount of wetted hull. Looks like they could have a used a larger propulsion unit. That one looks like a Chamorro, a Samoan unit might have been able to deliver a little more power. You're a lucky guy Pete, is that you in the photo? And no insults intended in my remarks. :>  Jack | ||
| Captpete |
is that you in the photo? Hell, yeah, that's me. Look pretty good for a 66 year-old, worn out, half stove-in fisherman, don't I?  | ||
| Jackbequick |
Yes you do. I hope I can do as well. I have a little over to wait for it. My son asked if I wanted to do anything special for my 65th birthday. I told him that continuing to be alive, healthy, and go for an occasional ride would be enough. Jack | ||
| Captpete |
I wish that were me, Jack. All I'd have to do would be to lose 300 pounds, and I'd be a young man again... with hair! | ||
| Captpete |
At that guy's age, I was a bit lighter than he, and a little farther offshore. Between fish boats, somewhere south of Bermuda, drivin' a Cherubini 44 to the BVI. Man, what a boat! Scaled-down version of Ticonderoga. Perfectly-balanced ketch rig. We ran on a beam reach for a day and a half in light air, flying a mizzen staysail, and never touched the helm. Running sun shot. Circa 1979  | ||
| Pammy |
Ren't you the sexy beast?  | ||
| Captpete |
That was hateful, 'cause you know what I look like today! I was having drinks with some friends the other evening, and somehow, the conversation got around to how parents would react when their daughters brought a guy home for the weekend. This particular couple had an 18 year-old daughter, and the wife said that in this day and age, she'd let them share a bedroom. Her husband quipped, "What if she brought Pete home with her?" Big joke of the night. Everyone rolled on the floor for about a half-hour. "Yeah, but you shoulda seen me in the days!" More hillarious laughter. I'ts bad enough that the fish have been laughing at me ever since I got out here. And now this! So, how's things in PP? Wes still putting 20-hour days in out back? You still punching out the occasional rude customer? | ||
| Rocketman |
That's a great picture Capt! Rocket | ||
| Captpete |
Posed, I'll admit. But it was happenin'. The better picture would have been the time discovered I had been lost for a day and a half. I shot and re-shot the sun, and re-calculated a dozen times, but just couldn't seem to get out of Kansas. That evening at dusk, I was on my way to frantically shooting every star in the heavens, plus the moon, until it got so dark I lost the horizon. I was back close to my dead reckon position, but mulled over the bad fix for two days until I finally found the little procedural error that I had made. Those of you who have practiced this most-mysterious right of life at sea (BS!), have probably figured out the stupid mistake that I made. (Hint: shooting one of the two bodies with a large angular diameter.) Being lost at sea is a strange feeling. It's similar on land, but sobriety generally clears that up. | ||
| Jackbequick |
In my brief time while owning a Columbia 22' while being held prisoner by the Navy in Hawaii, I borrowed a sextant and played with it a little. It did not take me long to realize that celestial navigation was tough enough when you knew exactly where you were on high resolution chart. I tried to reduce the ambiguity by tying off to a anchoring bouy in dead calm waters and that was only a little help. But it was fun. I was using a basic handheld calculator for the math and even with that and a good worksheet the results could be strange. I had fun, I think it planted the seeds for my interest in GPS. I think I've outgrown the desire to sail around the world but I'd still like to take one long cruise on a sailboat. I get to do occasional deliveries on 36 to 40 foot power boats to points between Maine and Cape Cod. Thats fun enough and all done with a trusty handheld (formerly a Magellan Meridian, now a Garmin 76Cx). I think 60 miles offshore is about as far out as I get. I was recently looking at some electronic charts of places I've been in The Aleutians, The Philippines, Hawaii, and Guam. Sort of a nostalgia trip, I'd love to go back to many of those places. I was noticing the soundings around Guam, I guess if you drop a tool overboard down there it is history. :> Jack | ||
| Captpete |
I guess if you drop a tool overboard down there it is history. It is for me, Jack. Too many cigarettes for too many years. The boat’s parked in about 12 feet of water, which is clear enough to sort of see bottom. A couple of months ago I reconditioned three electric bottom reels that I’ve had for 25 years, and haven’t even looked at for 15. One of them was missing a part that is used to tighten up the drag. It was nothing more than a 3/8 SS T-bolt, so I went to my little shop in the 20-foot container, and made a new one. 5-minute job, except for gassing up the generator, dragging out the welder leads, and the 15-mile round trip to the shop. As soon as I got to the boat, I immediately dropped the thing on the deck while trying to screw it into one of the reels. It must have had escape on its mind, for it bounced over a 1-inch hydraulic hose on the deck and dove neatly through the little gap between the deck and one of the flappers fixed outside each of the scuppers, which keep the water from coming in through them. I could have stood there all day trying to make that shot on purpose. I looked at the situation for a couple minutes, thinking about having to change into a bathing suit, drag out the flippers, mask, and snorkel, untie the boat from the floating dock, rig a line to hold it away from the dock so I wouldn’t surface between the two, and then make the dive and stay down there long enough to find the damn thing. I finally said, screw it, drove back to the shop, and made two more, in case I dropped another one overboard. (Now I have a spare in inventory.) The most bothersome part of the experience was wondering why I wasn’t smart enough to make a pair of them the first trip. But yeah, you can nearly throw a stone out to the 100-fathom line out here. It gets deep in a hurry. But if you have some of the medium-resolution charts for out here, they show some of the banks south of the island, although they aren’t too faithful. (81048 – SW corner.) They should have named that whole area “The Washing Machine.” I’ve fished in a lot of different sea conditions over the years, and am no stranger to rough weather, sometimes jogging around in 20 to 25-foot seas with four or five-foot rolling crests for a couple of days at a time, waiting for a front to pass so we could get back to work. But I’ve never worked anything like this place. Wind waves on top of swells, and when everything hits the banks, it just falls apart. Ten-foot wind waves along with a six-foot swell gets totally crazy. The seas just seem to jump up and down, with no form, and you never know which way the damned boat’s going to go next. One minute you have a stable work platform, and the next, with no warning, you’re trying to walk around in a goddamned swimming pool. Sorry… I didn’t mean to get into the sea story mode. In some ways, I’m glad I’m going broke out here and am going to have to give it up pretty soon. Those banks suck in the wintertime. I’m glad for an excuse to not have to deal with them anymore. I’d rather be flat busted in Florida! The rest of my fishing career is going to be done with a fly rod. | ||
| Captpete |
PS, Jack. Sextants: The calculations are a snap. The Davis worksheet, a current almanac, an accurate timepiece ($5 at K-mart), and HO 229. The calculator is a luxury. Oh, yeah, and a star-finder, if you don’t want to learn the 58 primary stars. A one-second error in your timepiece will introduce a quarter-mile error into your shot. Taking the shot and then quick looking at your timepiece can get tricky, especially taking evening or dawn shots. I always used a stopwatch, which I could hold in my hand along with the sextant. Just punch the button to start it when you took your shot. Then, you could refer to your timepiece, and when it came up on an even minute, stop the stopwatch. Subtract the stopwatch time from the even-minute time, and you have your shot time. The tough part is physically taking the shot. They say it takes 1000 shots to get the hang of it. I never counted, but I found it to be the same as competition pistol shooting. I spent some time on a pistol team in the Army, and after a bunch of practice, you got to the point where you knew exactly where every round had hit the target. You might miss the bull’s-eye five or six times out of 30 rounds, and when the targets were examined, there was rarely a surprise. It was the same with a sextant. You got to the point where you knew when you had a good shot. My habit was to shoot each body three times in a row, and solve each shot to an LOP. (The time to do that each day was a welcome relief from the boredom.) If you had a bad shot, it became obvious when you drew the LOP’s, and you threw it out, and averaged the other two. It was interesting to notice that when you drew your LOP’s, you could tell how rough the sea conditions where when you took the shots. The rougher it was, the farther apart the LOP’s would be. And lastly, when you’re a thousand miles from your landfall, who cares if your fix is out by five or ten miles? It’s all just a big bunch of water, and that kind of error won’t affect a thing. I got pretty blaze’ after a few of those deliveries. I wouldn’t even pull the sextant out of the box for the first three days south of Bermuda. I’d just sail south. After that, I’d use running sun shots, which always had the error of the four hours dead-reckoning advancement of the morning shot. Once again, so what? The evening or dawn before expected landfall, I’d shoot some stars and get the best fix I could. So, don’t feel bad about those fixes you were getting hanging off that buoy. You were probably doing fine. Even the perfect pinwheel fix ain’t that accurate. I only missed Bermuda one time, and it wasn’t anyone’s fault, unless you cite poor dead reckoning. Overcast for two days before landfall. I was to the point where I was getting a bit worried, when we sailed past a beach chair, and shortly after, a couple other bits of flotsam. I figured we were straight downwind of the island, so we started tacking every two hours, sailing close-hauled to windward. Six hours later, we raised the island. | ||
| Road_thing |
Man, you're taking me back to Annapolis, 1970. Lt. Mitchell's classes in Celestial Nav. I might've been an admiral if I coulda stayed awake... rt | ||
| Jackbequick |
Great stories Pete. Too bad the fishing is not working out. Thanks for the help on the sextant, it been so long that none of that makes any sense to me anymore. I was not a Quartermaster and learned little to nothing about navigation in the Navy. If I was going off shore I'd take two or three GPS receivers and plenty of batteries. One of the local fishermen hit the lottery for about $200,000 recently and they interviewed him on TV. When the ditzy blonde asked what he was going to do with all that money he said "Well, I'll pay my fuel and bait bills, for shuah, and then I'll keep on fishing as long as the money holds out." Jack | ||
| Captpete |
Yeah, Thang, and I bet the Navy was doing it the hard way, too. Spherical trig, and all that mess, in case you got your reduction tables wet. Too bad. I like the sound of Admiral Thang! But I liked fooling with it. It's pretty cool doing that stuff for a week or two (in my case), never knowing if you are doing it right (unless, of course, you suddenly find yourself in Kansas), and then have land pop up on the horizon when it's supposed to. My first delivery, I went nuts, jumping up and down hollering "Land Ho," and generally making a fool of myself when we made landfall. After I had a couple-three under my belt, I'd just sneak below, enter it into the log book, and then go back up on deck and see how long it took the next person to spot it. Not me, Jack. I think I'm finally old enough to know better. If I won the lottery tomorrow, I'd give this boat away, buy a deluxe travel box for Dewey, and give this place the finger as we were boarding a big old jet. I'm tired of bustin' my ass out here for nothing. I gave it my best, and I'm done. Well, almost done I've still got to make one more trip to the banks to see if I can put a trawl on the bottom in 2000' of water, and get it back with some shrimp in it. Then, I'm done. That'll be the end of this story. It'll be time to kick back and try to tell some of these stories in a book, rather than keep on chasing them. Play with Dewey without worrying about him getting swept overboard, and pick a few tunes on the old guitar. Maybe smoke a doobie now and then when the cops aren't looking. | ||
| Reepicheep |
Tell me where I can pre-order that book Captain! | ||
| Bomber |
Pete -- if'n ya need some assistance with the book, gimme a shout! while my nautical adventures are limited to a long weekend on a DE (evil scum buckets!), and a buncha taxi rides on PBRs, I can clean up wonky sentances and walk-about paragraphs pretty good -- I can even spell, if the occasion calls for it ;-} in any event, helping would allow me to read it first! Admiral Thing of the Ocean Sea! Sounds bout right (given the color of your pond!) | ||
| Road_thing |
Biker Admiral of the Apocalypse... | ||
| Bomber |
ROFLMAO! you damned betcha! | ||
| Firemanjim |
Bomber, your claim to being able to spell is somewhat suspect--as sentence has no A in it. No get back to working on and posting about bike!!!  | ||
| Bomber |
Jim -- good eye, sir -- work proceeding nicely, thanks -- big fun in the e-lab | ||
| Captpete |
Thanks for your vote of confidence, Reep! It's that kind of encouragement that caused me to decide to take on this challenge. And thank you, And FMJ, yer in charge of spelling. Anyway, Bomber, I'm aware of the absolute necessity for a kick-ass editor. I have a friend who is a professional editor, and she has offered to work on a contingency basis. Unfortunately, I had to fire her recently for being a bit too observant. She called me an arrogant a$$hole in an email. There are editors, and there are editors. And they all have their styles. Some are nit-picky grammar freaks, and others want to rewrite the whole piece for you, and stifle your voice in the process. I would hope to find the one who's akin to a piece of sandpaper. Smooth out the bumps, and polish what's left. I've been thinking that I don't need to look for an editor until I have a complete manuscript, and so far, I've only 75 pages in the can. But, since I will walk away from this experience out here a true pauper, it would behoove me to consider anyone who is kind enough to help for free.  Thanks for your offer, Bomber. I'll PM you. | ||
| Bomber |
I live to serve! actually, I'm more of a "this just doesn't make sense to me, what are you trying to say" kind of an editor . . . in the field of journalism and textbook editing, I'd be SO outa work . . . . | ||
| Bomber |
I live to serve! actually, I'm more of a "this just doesn't make sense to me, what are you trying to say" kind of an editor . . . in the field of journalism and textbook editing, I'd be SO outa work . . . . does this mean you're NOT an a$$hat? who knew? | ||
| Captpete |
does this mean you're NOT an a$$hat? I have fit her description on occasions. But I'm getting better. Going broke at what you do best will do that for you. | ||
| Pammy |
"She called me an arrogant a$$hole in an email." How dare she..... You are certainly, without a doubt, absolutely, not....arrogant.  | ||
| Captpete |
Well, certainly not while living in the back yard at CycleRama, basking in the genius of Wes Bob, and trying to steal some of his secrets. I may be an a$$hat, but I ain't stupid. | ||
| Pammy |
I will certainly be glad when you get back to civilization...well at least back to Florida anyway. | ||
| Captpete |
Me, too, Pammy. You just don't know, girl. I can't wait for you to meet my partner. He's the instant cure for any malady of the soul. Somehow, he makes everyone he meets feel good. I can't explain it. Why, I bet if he visited you for one week, your knuckles would heal up. No rude customer could stay rude for long once they met Dewey. | ||
| Captpete |
Two weeks, and you'd be totally out of shape. You'd have to start going to the gym. | ||
| Pammy |
Petey, you know I have a soft spot for dogs...and geetar pickers |
