Crystal Sea Trawling Blog

We are back in the harbour today after being forced in yet again due to the weather. We got two days fishing in from wednesday to thursday, but in the early hours of friday morning it blew a gale from the west, with the swell making very quickly the fishing took off  so we had to end our trip early and come in. The forecast when we sailed was sounding good for the weekend, but unfortunatlya deep low is sitting just to the west and is refusing to budge, so its looking that we may not get away again until monday evening.

The boat is due up for a fefit in the middle of june for a couple of weeks, so we could do with the weather settling so we can work up to the refit date. We have a big job on this year, we are fitting a new nozzel and propellor to the boat as the old one has rusted out quite badly and it needs replacing. Also the new nozzel is a different design, which they say will be 15% more efficent, so if it works like they say it will, hopefully we should see a good saving on the fuel bill each week. There is also the usual maintenance work to be done, we have a list of welding jobs to do and the boat needs a good paint up. She's not looking her best right now as last year we only managed to paint the hull and wheelhouse, so she is well overdue for a good paint up.

We have had a few unusual boats pass us up in the last few weeks, last trip we had the new type 45 destroyer pass us one morning, she looks quite different to the other naval vessels with her sleek lines and anti radar detection hull design she looked the business, the target that she made on our radar was only the size of a small fishing vessel, so the Royal navy will be glad to know that the new hull seems to be working.