Team Russia and the fishing net

77 miles to go this morning for last arrival on leg 2 of the Volvo Ocean Race

“Bang bang”, loud stamping on the deck means “get your butt up here ASAP”. So, automatically, I jump out of the bunk and run on deck. The jib is being dropped, while the main is completely eased.

“What’s up?”

“We caught this guys net.” Mikey [Joubert] points to our left where on a small fishing boat we can make out a bunch of guys running around as frantically as we are.

With a torch we soon see the seriousness of the situation. It is the middle of the night, and we have come to a full stop in a net stretching more than a hundred meters. It is fully tangled around both the keel and the rudders. We have to stop the boat, that is the only way we are going to get it off. Downwind in 12 knots of breeze getting the main down is not all that easy, as the sail gets pressed up tight against the rig. A full five man operation later the main however is down and we can now focus on getting the fishing equipment off our boat.

The fishermen are still jumping up and down a lot, and it is clear we can expect very little help from their side. After assessing the situation we decide the only way to get this net of is by getting it slack and cutting it free.

“Get the swimmer of the watch bag on deck!” Oh, oh, memories of a slip of the tongue three months ago spring to mind. Something along the lines of “I am a pretty good swimmer, I was a lifeguard.” Stupid me….Well, it is time to face the music, and moments later I jump into the pitch black water with a knife and a spare jib sheet.

In the darkness it is hard to make out the net, and there is a serious risk of getting tangled up in it myself. Moreover, the main line of the net to which we want to attach the sheet is a meter under water. A few dives later however, I manage to tie the sheet to the net and get back to the boat as quick as I can. Don’t want to spend one more second than necessary in this trap!

Back on deck the other guys are doing a great job in pulling in the net to take the tension of it, and gathering it. It is at least four meters deep and an enormous job to pull it up. Thank god we are not fisherman and have to do this every day!

With everything in place, we cut ourselves free from the main part of the net, and start drifting away. Good! Now that we are no longer connected with the main part of the net, the piece around our rudders and keel gets free, we drag it around the bow, and even manage to bring it on board. That went a whole lot better than expected! No fish for dinner unfortunately, but we decide to keep the net on the boat, to avoid other sea life or boats getting trapped in it. Or ...maybe use it when we get becalmed later?

The scary bit about it all is that there were no lit buoys on either side of the net, and no more than some working lights on the fishing boat. Next leg we can expect to see many more of these boats, so specialised boathooks and cutting devises are already widely discussed and drawn up. Very much to my liking as night time diving in inside a fishing net is not something I wish to repeat. Me and my big mouth…. Wouter

See the video of this here