There was a bit of drama this morning, but that comes later in this entry.
I woke just in time to shut the hatches to keep the rain out. Normally I shut everything at night. But this time I’d forgotten, and only the cool breeze gave me some warning that it was about to get wet in the main cabin.
Drama
At around 9AM I was busy trying to discover an error in my bash script parameter expansion when I heard a faint horn sound outside. I thought to myself that there must be kids playing on one of the neighbouring boats and continued with my work. Then the sound repeated itself in a discernible pattern. I went up top to see what was up. Nothing close by, but there was a small 30-ish foot boat in the middle of the channel with the mainsail partially lowered and flapping. I could make out that someone was at the anchor windlass and then I saw an orange flash behind the boat. I immediately knew that the hapless boat had snagged a souvenir fish pot.
The four boats around me all had people on deck. All had dinghies in the water. None were doing anything. My dinghy was still lifted out of the water to dry, but I felt I needed to act. It took me a while to untether and lower it, then get it to the back of the boat. Nobody else in the anchorage was moving, they were just watching. They didn’t even pretend not to know what was going on. Shame on them!
Off in the dinghy
I got going, after taking my handheld VHF along, and it turns out that it was a singlehanded sailor who had indeed snagged a fish pot. He was signalling for assistance because he didn’t want to go diving alone while in the middle of the channel. We worked things out and it turns out that he had a dive tank and a hookah system, which he got ready to use. While I played lookout and safety, he dove and spent about 10 minutes cutting and untangling the line.
The two Tide detergent bottles that were being used as floats drifted off downwind and he came back on board. He wanted me to remain around for a little bit while he made sure that there was no damage to the drive train; my 18HP outboard would be sufficient to push him about if that were the case.
While he checked the engine I zipped downwind, retrieved the two floats, then re-attached them to the floating line still attached to the trap. I thought that fishermen were supposed to use sinking lines to avoid those floating minefields!
Anyway, the intrepid singlehander got going again. And I went back to Zanshin to change into dry clothing. We’d had 2 strong showers during the hour it took to get sorted.
Back to work
I found my programming error and continued at work until now, my lunch break.
Afternoon
I’ve got some long-running jobs at work, but none of them run long enough for me to take a lengthy break and clean the hull. I’ll plan on doing my scuba dive tomorrow at lunch and finally remove the rest of the encrustations on Zanshin.