Becalmed on the Skerries bank for the afternoon. A good spot to gather bait, but once we had some bait, we'd have the chore of refreshing their water to keep them alive, so we waited till the wind began again. When a breeze arrived, we fished for sandeels, and found only a couple of mackerel. Oh well, we can try for bait at the fishing grounds, or rely on softbaits.
The wind came from the south west, as did the tide, so we pulled up all sail and tried to get round Start Point before the tidal stream became to strong but we didn't make it. Managing only 4-5 knots in a light wind, having to tack through a current of 1-2 knots directly against us - do the trigonometry - no progress. It had been a long day, having been up at 5 to make preparations for the trip, and getting the ice and so on, so the prospect of sailing against the wind and tide round the point for most the night held no attractions. We decided to anchor at Hallsands:
and managed to dump our anchor right on the outer anchor symbol.
Hallsands at sunset:
and Start Point:
Our GPS has an anchor alarm function - if our position moves by just 20 metres, the alarm is fired. Unfortunately, the alarm isn't very loud at all, so I moved things around so I could sleep with my head next to the GPS.
The anchor held, but I was awoken at 2 am by the noise of waves slapping against the hulls. Looking out, I saw that the wind had increased and shifted to the north, the increased fetch allowing the waves to build. The wind was still pretty light though, so I lay awake considering the options. If the wind increased and the anchor didn't hold, we wouldn't have long to retrieve the anchor and get the sails up and before we were driven onto Lobster Rock, or Shoelodge Reef or something else hard and just a little way downwind. At the moment, the tide too was heading south, and with the wind and tide in the same direction, the water was relatively smooth. When the tide turned at 4 am, we'd have wind against tide, which builds waves much larger than just the wind can manage. We get no more sleep after that time. Then also, the tide would again prevent us from getting around Start Point.
At 3 am we went out into the dark to pull up the anchor and to raise the sails, to get around Start Point before the tide turned. Normally, it would be easier to raise the sails first, but since our route was downwind, we could do without the complications of sails flogging about in the dark as we were on the foredeck getting the anchor up. We could just raise the jib later.
Without a windlass, getting the anchor up can be hard work! So we lead the anchor rope across the coachroof to a sheet winch, and Fred winched from the cockpit as I pulled from the foredeck. We had to stop for a minute so Fred could come and see the sparkling fluorescence on the rope, but otherwise, it went smoothly. With just the jib, we went round Start Point slowly, but I didn't want to turn into the wind to enable us the get the mainsail up until we were clear of all those hazards, made more hazardous due to the dark.
With all sail set in the breeze, Fred sailed for the Catlin banks as the sun rose. A couple of hours later, I took over the watchkeeping and we arrived at 7 am. I set about laying a longline so that we could be fishing as I had breakfast.
The longline was fiddly to set up. All worked as planned, but there are a lot of lines involved and my makeshift line-handling equipment slowed things down, as did the snood clips being too small to easily connect to the mainline. It took 1.5 hours to set a length with 25 hooks. The next time would be quite a bit quicker, as some things I had to do wouldn't need doing again. I'd set the the length of line between the floats and the weights at 25 metres, so the lures would be close to the bottom:
After breakfast, we drifted over one of the banks, and I was disappointed to see on the fishfinder than the depth was closer to 35m than 25. Some of this would be due to the tidal rise, which I should have accounted for. So the lures were 10m from the bottom - not very useful, and tedious to pull it all in to reset. So we left it down, and sailed over slowly the other bank, which was a bit shallower, but not much.
A fisherman friend had come out in his boat and had a couple of small ling and small pollack, and I gave him a couple of buckets of ice to keep them fresh.
Hauling in the longline, we had our first fish with this method:
But that was it - a lot of work for one small pollack. Notice the green snood line is twisted round the mainline - I need to add weights to each snood to prevent this from happening.
So, we had tested the trolling longline idea, and found ways to improve it. And from the evidence of our poor haul, the view on the fishfinder, and our fisherman friend's catch, there weren't many fish about. So there seemed little point in resetting the longline.
More important was to try out my other new method, the improvised downrigger setup:
This worked just as planned, with the small weight on the fishing line sinking the float on the downrigger line. We were easily able to keep our lures close to the bottom sailing and up to 3 knots. Details of this system are available here. Unfortunately, trailing lures through nearly empty water doesn't make fish come by magic.
Our fisherman friend came back in the afternoon for more ice. He had a few fish - a few small ling, a few small pollack, and an embarrassingly small cod. I think he done better because he'd used live bait, and he had been running about all day trying one spot after the other. Oh well, I had plenty of ice to spare.
It was time to call it a day. A small pollack and a couple of mackerel is a pathetic haul, but I'd tested by setup, and found ways to make improvements for next time, and next time, we'll go further to find the fish, the Channel islands perhaps.
Meanwhile, some things to fix. The Rutland Charge regulator, which prevents my battery becoming over charged from the solar panel has died. I had to bypass it, but I need it repaired so that the battery can regain a full charge after each trip. I put some wooden wedges into the gap between the daggerboards and the daggerboard cases. One of the wedges has slipped down, jamming the daggerboard so that it can't be raised. Tricky. I'll have to winch it up, but before I can do that, I have a sheet winch to fix - one of them has become quite stiff of operate. And when all that's sorted out, I need to sort out my longline materials before I'll be ready again for another trip.
Our return journey was fast, as we set off with a favourable tide and wind. We raised the spinnaker for the first time, and I was disappointed to be slowly overtaken by a couple of monohulls close to the coast. When they furled their jibs and left their mainsails up, I remembered that whenever I am overtaken by another boat, it is usually because they are running their engine!
The spinnaker stayed up till we got to Berry Head, where there were lots of little boats fishing for mackerel. The sock refused to come down over the spinnaker, so we had to drop it onto the net between the hulls, full of wind as it was. Tricky, but we managed it, and sailed round to the mooring with just one tack, leaving behind a monohull that was motoring behind us.
Oh yes, I have a bundled up spinnaker in a bag to sort out too.
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