Trawlers in the Sea of Abaco

When you look at almost any photo of an anchorage in the Sea of Abaco, you can easily be deceived into thinking that the most predominant form of boat is not the trawler. This is because many of them are in disguise.

What do you see when you look at this picture of the Hope Town anchorage?

I see almost exclusively trawlers. Let me explain.

Let’s start with these boats.

These boats look trawlers, but they are not. Like a trawler, they are intended to move at slow speeds, have a huge amount of space on board and are designed to be very fuel efficient when compared to a high speed planning motoryacht. These vessels may be trawlers, but most of their sister ships are not.

The trawler like vessel on the right is intended for the deep blue sea. It draws about 6 feet. It can only enter or leave most of the harbours in this area at or near high tide. Many of them need electricity so that they can do simple things like cook without a generator. So, they go to a marina where there is ample electricity and then they stay there where they do not have to worry about tides, anchors, electricity etc and where life is both easy and comfortable. These boats, however, are not trawlers. They are floating condos. You won't find them in most anchorages.

Now don’t get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with having a condo in a beautiful climate right on the edge of the sea. But a condo is not a trawler. Trawlers move.

The trawler on the left is a coastal trawler. It draws much less – maybe 4 feet. But its twin propellers are relatively exposed. While in theory, it could enter or leave harbour at most tides, it doesn’t because the touch of a propeller to the ground spells thousands of $ in damages. Again, many of these become floating condos. You sometimes find them in harbours, but seldom in anchorages.

In the Sea of Abaco, most of the true trawlers are shallow draft and have single engines with propellers well protected by a keel. They move about a lot and also anchor out almost as often as sailboats.

A surprise to me was that there are many manufacturers of trawler yachts that I did not previously know about such as Catalina, Hunter, Whitby, Morgan, Tartan etc.

Many of these trawlers in disguise as something else. They are characterized by deep draft, narrow beam, pointy bows and tall steadying sails. An example would be a sister ship to the vessel to the right. These trawlers are very fuel efficient but, compared to a classical trawler, they have little space on board and they have the great disadvantage of having to being able to enter or to leave most harbours at or somewhere near high tide. This can really cramp your travel plans if high tide is not until mid afternoon and you want to be squared away well before happy hour (5:00 pm). Their tall steadying sails are apparently actually usefull for dampening out rolling action when crossing the Gulf Stream (motorsailing). Apparently, their sails can actually be used to propel the boat by themselves but this is rare since batteries usually need charging and water often needs to be made and both these normally require a running engine. They motor with the idea that once these needs are met, they will sail. But all trips in the Sea of Abaco are short – so the trip is over before water making and battery charging are complete.

There is an interesting variety of this type of trawler in disguise. This type has a shallow keel and a smaller steadying sail. The Morgan OI and most motorsailers are examples of these. They have the advantage of being able to get into and out of most harbours at almost any tide. They have much more room on board for their size than their deep draft pointy ended trawlers in disguise as sailboats and they are still very fuel efficient. I have never, however, seen one of these actually sail and maybe I never will.

Another interesting variety is the large catamaran. These boats can get into and out of most harbours at most tides, are extremely fuel efficient and have a huge amount of space on board. The ones that are chartered for a week or so at a time seem to sail all over the place. They often have large, fully battened mainsails. I am told that these can easily weigh 200 pounds and that raising one is like hoisting them is as much work as hoisting a person up the mast. Unless the boat is equipped with an electric halyard winch, raising one of these sails is just too much work to be bothered with, if the planned sail is short. All planned sails within the Sea of Abaco are short.

Smaller multihulls such as the Gemini 105 are different. Hoisting sails is much less work. Outboards do not provide much battery charging. They seldom have onboard water making capability. So, they seem to sail wherever they go. These boats are not trawlers.

Finally, there are also trawlers which are disguised as planning motoryachts. These are typically manufactured by corporations such as Chris Craft. Actually, there are two classes of these. All, in theory, are capable of planning.

• There are those that never plane. They move at trawler speeds. They have a huge amount of space, still get much worse fuel consumption than a normal trawler and usually wait for a significant tide to enter or to leave a harbour. Although their draft is low, their propellors are very exposed since they have no skeg and the consequence of error is so high (bent props, shafts, maybe struts and maybe transmission problems) that they like to have a big margin for error before committing to making any passage. Most of these seldom anchor out, preferring to move only from marina to marina and there are few harbours with marinas here. This is because they are so dependant on electricity to do things like cook and few people enjoy eating their meals raw. In fairness, some have auxiliary generators alleviating this problem. However, you still seldom see them in anchorages.
• There are those that do plane. However, these boats almost never move at all since fuel is so damn expensive. They also become floating condos at some marina.
  

So what does that leave?

It leaves:

• Condos in disguise as classical trawlers,
• Condos in disguise as high speed motoryachts,
• Trawlers disguised as monohull sailboats,
• Trawlers disguised as multhull sailboats,
• Trawlers disguised as motorsailers,
• Trawlers disguised as planning motoryachts,
• Classical trawlers disguised as themselves,
• Small cruising catamarans,
• Monohull hull sailboats that actually sail (rare),
• High speed sport fishing boats (usually only seen at a distance and for a short period) and
• Rubber dingies, small motorboats and very occasionally small sailboats.

Therefore, on the Sea of Abaco, almost all boats that you see just cruising, are trawlers.

Hunting for lobsters and other sea food

Lobsters are yummy. They also aren’t very smart. Once found, they will generally stay put until captured. Some people have suggested grabbing them by hand (not a great idea if an eel happens to also be in the same hole) and some have suggested that their legs can become entangled in a mop (but we could not get this to work). I have found that a single prong pole spear down their throat seems to work best as a means of capture.

The trick is to find them.

They must be over a certain size and at least 200 yards off shore.

You have to look under rock ledges and any hole where they might hide.

Once, and only once, we found the mother of all lobster hangouts. You have a boat limit of 6 per person, so we stopped there. Unfortunately for us, someone else followed us and cleaned the place out so we could not return.

The happy hunters and their booty are shown above. The picture of the lobster in the water was taken at Sandy Cay, an underwater park. This one, we could only capture with our camera and leave for others to enjoy.

We have also tried hunting fish. They are much easier to find, but more difficult to catch. It is easy to get close to a small fish. It is much more difficult to get close to a large fish unless it is hiding in a cave. One of the photos shows Bev feeding the fish in an underwater park. I think she might have been hoping that some might have followed us outside its boundaries.

We used a 5 foot pole spear with a single point and a folding barb to catch the lobster. It worked well. It did not work well for free swimming fish, however, as its range is too limited. You have to get within about 2 feet of the fish when you release the pole if you want it to penetrate fully. The pole spear with the single barb does not work well for fish in caves. The problem is that the spear will drive the fish back and then the tip of the spear will hit the wall of the cave before it has penetrated fully. At this point, the fish is probably mortally wounded but will escape, never to be seen again.

Our next try was a 6 foot spear with a longer elastic for more thrust and a 3 pronged spear which much less penetration for the barbs to take hold. Our hope is that it will be better.

We will also try a Hawaiian sling. This consists of a short handle with a hole into which a spear slides and an elastic to shoot it. The range of a Hawaiian sling is much greater and it should be better for open water. The spear is completely free, however, so you should not use it where you could not dive to the bottom to retrieve it.

Life is an adventure and so is fishing. We look forward to its continuation.

Blowing the conch

When Bev’s sons were visiting, I explained to them that it would be important to their social life that they learned to blow the conch.

There is a story that explains that as part of the passage to man-hood, every young Bahamian male had to find an appropriately sized conch by swimming for it, by cleaning it themselves, by turning it into a horn and by learning to blow it, much as one would blow on a trumpet. At sundown, each young male would then blow their conch to announce their availability and where they were. I am not sure if this was the beginning of the expression “blowing your own horn” but, in effect, this was part of a mating ritual. No young woman would be interested in any male that did not blow their own conch since they obviously had not yet passed to manhood or were not available.

What you have to realize is that there is absolutely no truth to this story – but then one should not let the facts get in the way of a good story should they?