We got up bright and early to go out fishing today. After all the various delays and problems we had, the weather seemed auspicious and we wanted to give it a try.
We went out to Caldera Bay, only to find that the downriggers would go down, but not up. Both of them. Despite the fact that I’d tested them before departure, and had thought I’d solved the electrical problems yesterday morning.
Having the downriggers already partly down and then not having them go up is a bit of a problem. You have to turn the wheels manually, very slowly, pulling up on the weights (8 lb) on the ends of the lines. Arthur was doing that on the port side downrigger, and I was on the other side messing with the switch and trying to see why it would go down but not up. I made the mistake of messing with the “clutch” – a screw-in clamp on the side of the mechanism. This was because I was thinking maybe the wheel was screwed in too tight and so friction was combining with gravity to make it too hard for the motor to do “up” while it still could do “down.” Well, that may have been the case, but anyway I loosened the clutch just a bit too much, and suddenly the wheel was spinning and gravity was pulling the weight and the line out fast. I tried to stop it, and managed to lose my grip entirely, and just like that, the whole length of line was out and the wire snapped, and the weight was lost on the bottom of Caldera Bay.
Meanwhile, Art got the other one up, but the motor remained unable to do “up” and so we gave up on trolling. We thought: well, we could try for some halibut – Caldera is a place where we’ve had luck with halibut, before. But then we realized that Art had brought along the old halibut rods and reels – despite the fact that they both had some major problems and in fact, Alan (Art’s brother, my other uncle) had bought us new halibut rods and reels last fall. They were sitting in the boathouse. We should have brought those, right? But we hadn’t.
We sat in the sunshine and discussed looking at the scenery.
“Looks about the same as it did last year.”
“Yep.”
We decided to go back home. We tied up at the dock again by 8:30 AM.
I spent the rest of the day wrestling with downrigger electrical problems.
I feel, once again, that I’ve solved things. But! I’m not very confident, given I felt the same way yesterday at this time. So… looks like some stormy weather is coming through tonight, but Sunday might be nice. Tentatively, we’ll try again on Sunday. We will only have one downrigger though, even if the electrical problem is truly solved – because we don’t have any replacement downrigger line. Unless I drive into town tomorrow and shop for some. I might.
It was a trial run, I guess. On a positive side, the boat remains unsunk and no lives were lost.
Year-to-date totals:
- Coho: 0
- Kings: 0
- Halibut: 0
- Other: 0
- Downrigger weights left on the bottom of the sea: 1
had to read this blog entry to Dean. he enjoyed it tremendously! so well written – just like we were there! Murphy’s Law is EVERYWHERE!
you should do a book on your sea adventures. when you started talking about loosening the screw, we both said “Oh no”. Sounds like something we have done – soon as you do it you’re asking yourself “why did I do that”. you really made our day.
think about you guys often –