Crystal Sea Trawling Blog

Hi its been busy month for the Crysta sea and her crew, we were asked to do some survey work earlier in the month for Aberdeen university, the work was to be carried out on jones bank which is 80miles west of the scillies, so we arrived early in the morning on our first day and started the survey work, little did we know how eventful this job would become.

Our first haul went well towingfrom the top of the bank down the slope and hauling after an hour, as we were hauling I spotted a French trawler hauling equipment owned by the research vessel James Cook aboard his own boat so the Crystal sea gave chase, after putting our vessel across the bow of the pirate Frenchman he stopped and dumped the exspensive sonar equipment into the depths of the Atlantic, luckily we recorded the position with our GPS and plotters and the James cook was able to retrieve it.

So thinking that this was enough excitement for one day we started our second tow this went well but while we were on our third tow there was a freak accident and Janis's thumb was trapped in a rope and the end of his thumb was ripped off, so we took Jan into the galley to treat him and i contacted the coastguard on the big set as we were out of Vhf range. After an hour we managed to make contact and Falmouth coastguard despatched the rescue helecopter from RNAS Culdrose. The chopper arrived on scene an hour later and sent a man down to access the situation, Janis was doing well no screaming or moaning he was very brave, Alec and I had stopped the bleeding and dressed the wound but it was obvious that he needed surgery so the helicopter perpared to medivac Janis to Treliske hospital . Janis and the chopper crew left for Treliske with a bag of prawns from us to say thanks, I think Janis enjoyed his journey he was even caught on film for the next seies of seaside rescue.

It was quite a shock at the speed at which it happened and to see Jan injured we were all glad that it wasn't more serious but it was bad enough it really is quite a dangerous job at times.

I will Blog again tomorrow with the next installment of the trip which came to be known as the curse of Jones Bank.