Well there’s no more fishing this break. The weather isn’t playing fair but I’m sure it’ll be nice an calm next week when I’m working.
Back to that story about swimming. Last January I took one of my rig managers and his father out fishing. We ripped out and trolled for a bit then marked some good fish in about 100m of water so I dropped the anchor and we tried targeting them. The current was wicked, with 12 ounces of lead out lines were at about a 40 degree angle and we probably had 200m of line out before we hit bottom. We tried for about 20 minutes and I decided we would go find some fish on top of the banks in 25-35m of water and try again.
I hooked the anchor retrieval ball onto the anchor rope and drove away from it. The anchor was snagged so I hit the end of the rope and it never came off bottom. I tried a few more runs on different angles and at one point I saw the anchor ball give a weird movement that made me think it had come off the rope. I didn’t think that was very likely and though it must of just been my eyes playing tricks on me. I hit the anchor on another run and watched the ball and it didn’t follow us so I mentioned it had come off the rope.
My guests weren’t following what I was saying and I mentioned we weren’t getting the anchor off the bottom without that buoy. I ran up front and threw all the extra rope into the water and drove at the buoy to get it. I hit the end of the rope when we were about 30m short of the buoy.
That was my opportunity to stop and think which I bypassed.
I looked at them and said, I’ll just go get it. So I took my shirt off and jumped in, swam to get it (made great time swimming with the current), grabbed it and started swimming about 40 m back to the boat. It was tough slogging on my stomach trying to push a 2.5’ diameter ball in front of me so I rolled over on my back and drug it behind me while I kicked with my legs. I swam until I was tired and though I must be nearly back to the boat so I rolled back over on my stomach.
The boat was further away then when I started. Like 60-70m away and neither guy on the boat was paying attention to me.
Panic half set in so I yelled for their attention. His nickname is BB and I yelled “BB, I’m not going to make it” he yells back WHAT????, I said “I’m not going to make it, currents to strong”. He says “what do you want me to do”? I said “tie the fenders to the rope and throw the rope off the boat and come get me”. He says “ok”.
So then I rolled over on my back and kept kicking as hard as I could because I didn’t want to get out of ear shot in case he had trouble.
A few minutes go by and I haven’t heard the boat start. I rolled over and they’re still messing around with the fenders. By now I’m probably 120m away from them. I rolled onto my back and I start thinking;
I don’t know if they know how to start the boat.
I didn’t show them how to use the radio
They don’t know how to use the EPIRB
I don’t have any sunscreen on
In another couple minutes you’ll be out of ear shot from them and won’t be able to help
What if they start the boat and wrap that anchor rope around the prop and spin it off???
Then the big one hit me. I’m doing a lot of splashing in one place and there are a lot of sharks out here.
I had a quick mental chat with myself to get that idea out of my head.
Another couple minutes to by and I rolled over again. I was prob 200m from the boat but they were back at the helm. Then I heard the motor start and half calmed down. They got headed towards me and eventually I got in the boat. We had a good laugh about how stupid that was and I had cold sweats that night about what would of happened if I had done something so stupid with just the boys on the boat. I can swim like a fish but that current was ripping that day and I underestimated it.