Couple of weeks off, hope you didn’t miss me too much. The first weekend was caused by a fishing trip to the coast that really should have been called off due to the not-so-nice weather.
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And, when I mean weather, I mean a nasty southerly that didn’t drop below 15 knots all weekend, wasn’t much of a swell but jumpin jimminies the wind would have blown a dog off a chain.
That’s the problem with the long-term planning of a trip to the coast; realistically speaking a fishing trip to the coast to fish out wide is something planned on the Wednesday or Thursday before the weekend you go.
My crew consisted of our son (notice how I said our and not my – not gunna get in trouble again) who has spent a bit of time in open water, lives and fishes on the Goldy plus he was on the young Endeavour for a week in Bass Strait and never got sick; and good mate Patto Martin who lives on the South Coast and is constantly on the water.
We headed out to the 12 Mile on Saturday and Chris said after only half an hour, he was feeling a bit off so we could only travel out at about 10 knots so it took a while to get where we wanted to go.
We get there after about an hour and a half of constant movement of the throttle to keep the bow from going under or falling off the wave, Chris is still lying down and Patto says he feels like crap.
So, I have me driving and two crew crook – it’s very hard to fish for bait and drive and look after crew so after about an hour we (I) decided to head back to land.
Wind was blowing harder making the trip back even slower, so I put a couple of skirts out the back and headed in, around about a 2.5 hour trip.
So not much to skite about on that trip but I do have to say that the 1800 Tournament handled the conditions extremely well and not at any stage did I feel like the conditions were dangerous in any way.
And last week, I made a rookie mistake and ended up with 10 stitches in my right hand.
You know the funny thing about hurting your dominant hand is there are a lot of things you do with that hand that you take for granted.
I have been able to do a bit of reading over the last couple of days and I read a column by the editor of “Bluewater” Magazine, Tim Simpson, and it hit home with regards to the type of boats that we play with here.
The beginning or the heading of the column was “Smaller is Bigger” and to summarize it down a bit, it means that getting a bigger boat is not necessarily better.
The bigger the boat, the bigger the motor, the bigger the trailer, the bigger the car, the bigger the cost.
Now I know I probably shouldn’t say that because of what I do for a living – sell boats, but to catch a big fish out of a smallish boat gives you a greater sense of accomplishment.
You may have to work a little bit harder but you get greater satisfaction and a 15ft fish getting caught out of an 18ft boat looks a hell of a lot bigger than a 15ft fish caught out of a 28ft boat.
I will admit prior to reading the article I was always thinking I would love to have a 28ft boat to go offshore fishing but now I am more than happy with my 18ft as it does pretty much the same thing just at a slower pace.