MatTag Sailabout

I was on a daytime watch when Misty's alarm went off. We were undulating through two and three-foot seas with barely any wind. The hydrovane was doing her job beneath a cloudless sky, keeping us on our desired track.

We were motoring from Chacala south toward Bandaras Bay, a 25-mile wide, 3,000 foot deep bay skirted with several large marinas and cities, including Puerto Vallarta. None of us wanted to leave Chacala's palm-shaded beach, sloped cobblestone streets or welcoming people, but Bandaras Bay and anchorages south beckoned.

In the past hour, I'd seen three pangas with one or two Mexican fisherman in them, four or five sport fishing boats powering by with a load of eager tourists on board. In the distance, blows of three humpback whales caught my attention. More brown boobies, mostly adults, than we've seen in the past week flew past us. The coast was 3 miles to my left. There were no charted hazards ahead. This was an easy watch.

I had my Nikon camera manual in the cockpit to read. You know, the half-inch thick white-paper books that now come with digital cameras, jammed with more information than a pilot used to need to fly a 747 jet.

While on watch, I'd decided to tackle one more section on how to use my new camera. I like to sit on the edge of the cockpit, facing forward, so that I can see ahead to look for other boats. I skim a few paragraphs, look up and scan, read a few more paragraphs, scan again, check the chart plotter, then return to reading.

We were surrounded by open water. I could see to the horizon. Jim was messing with the fishing rods on the back deck and Glen was down below studying Civics. With only two days left to finish his high school course, he is more motivated than ever.

Misty, our 15-pound Schipperke, was patrolling the deck. Earlier she sat in a patch of shade, sphinx-like, on a red sail bag looking out over the water.

The swell on the beam was making our boat roll. Other than that, all was well.

- - -

I bow my head to read another half page of dense techno-text.

"RARF! Rarf-rarf-rarf! RARF!" Misty's guard-dog voice grabs my attention.

Her gaze is locked onto to something close to the boat, on the starboard side where I am reading. What has her attention is so close to the boat that I cannot see it from my perch. I stand up quickly, assuming my job is to 'shush' her, to allay her false alarm. She sometimes barks at boats too far away to be a concern. Or at pelicans that plunge-splash into the water nearby.

With her black fox head cocked and eyes focused down, tail high, she charges from the bow toward me, tracking something in the water hugging the hull. This is different.

We are motoring at 7 knots, so an object in the water would move at 12 feet per second past us in the opposite direction. That is about how fast Misty roars toward me.

Something in the water, the something that she is locked onto, catches my eye. It is a green soda bottle, one of the 16-ounce or larger types. I see a hint of red or orange writing on it. But why is it being dragged beside us?

In the instant I realize the answer to that question, I pivot back to the cockpit and lunge toward the throttle, shifting the engine out of gear as fast as I can.

As the engine RPMs drop from 1800 to idle, Jim's attention is pulled to the situation.

"What wrong?" he calls from the stern.

"We've just run over a floating line," I announce.

"Put the boat into reverse," Jim says.

"I think that will wrap the line," I say. "It's stuck beneath us."

The capped, air-filled soda bottle that Misty had spotted is now out of view, sucked beneath the boat. In the water behind us I can now see an orange line, about the diameter of an uncooked twig of spaghetti, stretched into a large 'V' by our boat. Behind us - if I stare where I know they should be - I can make out four more light-green soda bottles connected to the polypropylene line. They bob into view one by one; there may be more, but they are too small and far away to see in the swell. The soda bottles are spaced maybe 200-feet apart.

"Glen, can you get me that boat hook," Jim asks, gesturing over his shoulder. As soon as he heard the engine RPMs plummet, Glen was on deck.

"Sure," Glen says. "This is like that time we ran into the gill net on our way from Alaska to Washington," he adds.

"Except that this is a long line," Jim clarifies.

Hanging down from the orange line between bottles every 20 feet or so, is a 6-foot piece of translucent monofilament with a hook at the bottom.

"It's caught on the boat," Jim says.

"I can dive on it," I say. "Do you want me to get my suit on?"

"Yeah. That'd be great," Jim answers. Glen arrives with the extended boat hook. He reaches down, hooks the line and pulls it into Jim's reach.

Then, Glen loops the hook into the other side of the line. Together father and son assess the problem.

After our encounter with the gill net in Canada (see SAIL Magazine's Voices of Experience Article, Sept. 2012), Jim had told us how synthetic lines can melt into a solid wad if the prop stays in gear after a line is wrapped. The friction of the spinning can melt the line. Then, when the engine is taken out of gear, the molten mat cools into a solid block of plastic. If the tangle of line is big enough, compared the prop, shaft and engine size, the wad of plastic can cripple a boat until the plastic can be carved off.

I go below to retrieve my bathing suit. My snorkeling gear is on deck from the afternoon before. In Canada, I did not offer to dive on the tangled gear. The water in Mexico, in contrast, is friendly.

When I return, Jim and Glen have pulled a loop of the line up to chest level.

"It's not caught in our prop," Jim tells me. "But, it is looped around the skeg. I'm going to cut it, so you don't have to dive on it."

"Glen, can you hold this while I cut it?" he asks.

Glen takes the line and holds it taught. Jim uses the safety knife we keep mounted at the stern to cut the line. He pulls the far end around, unlacing it from the skeg, the narrow deep fin behind the prop and in front of the rudder.

Jim prepares to tie the ends back together.

"You're not going to tie it back together?" Glen challenges. "They shouldn't leave a line like this in the water," he adds. "We couldn't even see it."

"We should let them know that their line was hit," I add, siding with Glen.

For a minute, Jim is silent. He pulls the two bright orange line ends further out of the water. "The person fishing this line is very poor," he says, slowly. "We can't just leave it like this."

Glen starts to object, then realizes Jim's logic is on the mark.

"Hopefully they'll notice your knot and know the line was hit," I add.

Jim ties a fisherman's bend to join the separated line and drops it into the water.

I put the boat in gear, turn the helm and put us back on course. Later, I make a call on the VHF radio to other boaters in the area, to warn them of the hazard.

I return to the helm in the cockpit and stand behind the wheel.

"Misty!" I say, patting my thigh. She prances along the deck to the cockpit and hops over the cowling where I was sitting earlier. I rub her head and scratch her back. "Good work, Misty! You're a good girl," I say. She wags her tail. "Today, you earned your keep."