Weekend out of Weymouth - always carry a bucket with you......

[mike farrants]

So 3 of us went out over the 17th and 18th April from weymouth one day on my boat one day on tims, we also had a buddy boat with us - mixed results and a very important lesson learned!

Sat 17th - Out on my boat pugwash - a 9am start as we needed to fuel up both boats first - headed out to portland harbour entrances to feather up some mackerel - sadly nothing on either entrance, or over the Hood - the tide was now starting to race out over the hood and holding the boat steady while the others feathered was good practice for me handling the boat. sadly no mackerel. so we headed to a mark between Checkers and White Nothe around 4m off. 

Mixed results - i had couple of Dogs, an small eel and a small spotted ray. Tim had dogs and surprisingly a mackerel off the bottom on squid (fresh bait for sunday shambles trip), his son had a baby smoothound.

halfway through the day while sat at anchor i suddenly noticed my anchor bouy alongside the boat - i thought we had simply drifted up on the anchor, but before i had processed the thoughts the bouy was away - shackle visibly undone - bouy was just out of reach, and so was the landing net - one failed cast over it and it was disappearing with wind and tide - bit of head scratching and 1st thought was let it go, we will try to lift the anchor by hand, or use our buddy boat to recover it for us when we are done. 2nd thought was to attach our fenders to the anchor rope, leave it, go retrieve the anchor bouy and return to the fenders and re attach to the anchor - part one went without a hitch - collected the bouy, located the fenders and re attached to the anchor. we still had an issue though - the bouy was in the boat - the alderney ring was 70ft down on the anchor by now - so part 2 was a moment of genious - we fashioned a new alderney ring out of a bucket handle - held with a shackle and cable ties - when it came to lift anchor we attached the bucket handle & bouy and hoped for the best - and it mostly did the job - we didn't get the chain through it, but managed to handball that up. problem solved, all gear retrieved.

On the sunday we headed out on Tims boat to the shambes to drift for turbot - no joy after 2 drifts and it was very lumpy, so we went and anchored on the adamant shoal - i had 5 doggies and a bigger spotted ray on my last drop, tim had doggies and whiting, and his son improved on his smoothound with fish of the weekend. 

on the other boat they had thornies, spotted rays, dogs and spider crabs. 

lesson - check all your shackles are tight and probably best to cable tie them - and always buy decent buckets.

[suzook12]

Glad it didn't pale into insignificance 🤣

[Cuda4]

Great report, just goes to show anything can happen while at sea and a lesson to all of us to check the basic things.👍

[Andy135]

Well done MacGuyver! Good fixing and good fishing. Good lesson for us all there too. 👍

[jonnyswamp]

On 4/20/2021 at 9:20 AM, suzook12 said:

Glad it didn't pale into insignificance 🤣

Have you turned into odyssey

[suzook12]

2 hours ago, jonnyswamp said:

Have you turned into odyssey

Hell no!!

[jonnyswamp]

9 hours ago, suzook12 said:

Hell no!!

Glad to hear it, pull yourself together man !

[suzook12]

I think I've handled that situation now.....

[Odyssey]

6 hours ago, suzook12 said:

I think I've handled that situation now.....

I think you’ve bailed out quite well.... 

[Andy135]

On 4/20/2021 at 9:20 AM, suzook12 said:

Glad it didn't pale into insignificance 🤣

This was lost on me until I realised you might have meant "pail" as in bucket, rather than "pale" as in a lighter shade of colour.

[suzook12]

4 hours ago, Andy135 said:

This was lost on me until I realised you might have meant "pail" as in bucket, rather than "pale" as in a lighter shade of colour.

Me bad.... Naughty step for me it is then....