Friday night, July 1, we installed the stack pack for good this time. Here's a shot I took from the dingy:
It looks giant but it makes the boat easy to find, that's for sure. We hung up a hammock for fireworks viewing and enjoyed that greatly when we were not under sail.
Our karma came back to get us though. The annual Sippy Cup regatta is going to be on the night of the new moon this year. We scoffed at a captain who isn't going to participate for fear of snagging crab pots in the dark. We are crab pot proof, we said. We aren't worried, we said.
Just north of Poole's Island my husband was on the helm. I saw an orange float dead ahead and called it out, but we ran it right over anyway. I ran to the stern and waited . . . and waited . . . and waited and it did not pop up. We continued sailing with no steerage problems so I assumed we had dodged the bullet somehow, but every few minutes there was a quite little tappity tap on the hull. We sailed to the midway point of Poole's Island and still the tappiy tapping continued. I looked through all the stowages for something that would explain it and found nothing. Since we were moving pretty slowly my husband went overboard and checked the prop aperture, but there was nothing stuck there. We kept sailing and the tappity tapping kept going. Finally, since we knew we would want to motor into the wind to get to our anchorage for the night, we decided drastic measures were required. We dropped the sails, dropped anchor, and my husband went under the boat again. He checked the prop, he checked the rudder, he checked behind the boat, he checked all along the keel and found nothing. He was just swimming back to the stern, and was saying "I have checked everywhere, there is NOTHING stuck on this . . ."
And that was when he found it. His foot brushed a piece of taut line extending 90 degrees from the centerline of the boat and out. We hauled it in and found this guy:
The other end, the float end, was jammed into the 1/2 inch by 1/2 inch gap at the bottom of the hinge for the rudder, with the float pressed up against the hull. There's still a teeny tiny piece of line stuck in there. I tied the lines back together and left the pot where it was, some three miles from where it started. (sorry crabber guy, I hope you find it)
Karma.
So now we know. It's possible.
Meanwhile, it has been the worst year on record for carrion and fish guts on the boat. We have found fresh sushi, fresh intestines, millions of bones and scales, half a rabbit, and a duck egg so far this year. We hung up an owl and that seemed to help with the ducks but the ospreys/eagles are still enjoying themselves. I have a nice bloodstain in the middle of the mainsail now.
We keep trying different configurations of holographic reflective tape. Hopefully this weekend we won't find as much as we have been.
