Fishing tales aboard Maximvs: First not-so-serious accident

[John F]

We launched on Friday morning at 06:00. The sea was absolutely flat and water was warm (high 26s).

The plan was to do some livebait drifting and bottoms and have a nice, relaxed day. Stopped at Baixo Ribeiro for livebait but with the outgoing tide and the incredible current we didn't catch any.

We had portuguese sardines and halfbeaks so decided to carry on. Halfway to the grounds we came across a nice patch of bait (some sort of pilchard). Within 20 min, we caught about 20 of them throwing sabikis.

Got to a spot with great drop-offs and started trolling rappies and halcos and after 30 min of no bites decided to use baits. Live and dead baits went in and after 3 min a rod on the starboard side, with a live pilchard on a balloon, was taken by a nice 10-12 kg couta. It made a quick run towards the boat and with a slack line we thought it was gone. Eventually I saw it right in front of us at the surface crossing to port side. Shouted to the angler to reel in fast and drop the rod tip as I made a hard turn and pushed the trottle. Too late, the line parted as soon as it touched the keel!!!! Damn!!!!

Oh well.... things went quiet after that and we decided to catch some bottoms... it was about 11:00 h and we had no fish in the hatch!! Eish... talk about stressing out...

The bottoms were bitting nicely with good sized emperors and rockcods coming out. Funny enough all I caught was triggers... one after the other!!!!

Then disaster struck... a semi-industrial hand-liner was anchored nearby and started waiving as we approached. They were stuck there for 2 days with flat batteries. My batteries are "sealead" in the false tramson and I can't remove them at sea so I made contact with the club via radio and passed on the necessary details. Offered them water, but they had enough. While all rhis was going on one of the many line they had in the water was getting tangled in my port motor. My brother spotted it and tried to move it away. One rod was right next to it with Mustad hoodlums 3/0 baited up. Enough said. A hook got deeply stuck into the little right hand finger while he was holding the other line... The screaming was quickly followed by me turning off the motors and passing on the knife to cut the line.

This was about 2 pm and the fishing was over. Got my heavy cutter and broke the hook to remove the bait. Put some ice and a solution of Savlon into a plastic bottle of coke (top section) and submerged the hand in there.... rushed back home doing 25-28 knots (4500-5000 rpm).

Straigth to hospital (Maputo Private Hospital - part of the Lenmed group) and about 2 h later he was out. The hook was removed using MY leatherman (the hospital didn't have tools to remove it!!!!) and pushed out through the skin. He got a shot of tetanus vaccine, antibiotics as well as pain killers and iboprofen.

Two days later all is good...

Lessons learned:

1. Keep a safe distace when providing support to other vessels

2. Always have your tools and medikit handy. Have clean ice on board or better yet a pain freeze spray (already bought one for the boat!)

3. If going to a Lenmed hospital with a fishing related issue, take some specialized tools with (lol)...

On a side note...I couldn't be any happier with the zukes! At 115 h,  with an overall average consumption of 1.1 L/nm the fuel bill is as sweet as honey!

[bassbug]

tuff day indeed and thanks for sharing your day.

[SAfish]

Ouch! Glad he is ok and your fuel consuption is amazing.

[FishStyx]

Ouch!... Been there, done that. Only there was no hospital on St. Lazarus Banks... It's amazing how quickly it happens and how helpless one would be without the correct tools. Fortunately for me, we had a bolt cutter close by (I was connected to a hysterical Tuna via a Rapala), anesthetic, scalpel blades and a pair of side cutters to push and pull the hook through... and our skipper was not squeamish about performing the required surgery. I was also amazed with the brute force required to remove the hook from my toe.


Thanks for sharing Marcos... We must never underestimate the possibilities of accidents at sea.

[Ziggy]

    A few years ago fishing off a small duck at Barra when we  went over some local fisherman’s line - he was drifting a sardine. Our mistake,  we misjudged the length of his line. The line got caught in the motor along  with a trace made up of three treble hooks. As I was leaning over the motor to  untangle his line, the wave motion dipped and as the boat came up, my middle  finger got hooked. I was now latched on to the propeller with all the line,  trace and hooks. Using side cutters, we managed to free me from the prop. The hook  was deeply imbedded in my finger, so one of the crew snipped the treble hook so  that only the one barb was in my finger, after wrapping it with insulation  tape, we headed back to shore. I was the skipper – the two crew had never used  a boat.



When we beached, we decided that I need to get to the  hospital – the closest being Inhambane. I was concerned that I may not get good  treatment - it was also New Year’s Day and we thought that there may only be  skeleton staff. On arrival at the out patients, there was a small queue. The people  in the queue shuffled me to the front, saying that my issue was more urgent. I  was seen by two male nurses who gave me a local anaesthetic, cut out the hook,  disinfected the wound, gave me a tetanus shot and sent me off with spare  dressings. The place was spotless and everything was really efficient. Total  cost was the equivalent of R15.



Two months later, while repairing my boat motor, my finger  came too near to the spinning flywheel and ground off my skin making the bone  visible. I went to a private hospital in Durban where it took an hour to get  admitted at the out patients section. A really stupid an inefficient male nurse  dealt with my wound without much care or consideration (no anaesthetic and poured  pure alcohol over the wound and rubbed it hard with a swab). He bound it up in  a finger guard and sent me off home without any additional change of dressings.  Total cost R1700.


The treatment I got in in the Mozambique government hospital  was far superior and a much more pleasant experience at less than 10% of the  cost of a South African private hospital! Viva Mozambique viva!
 

[John F]

Thanks for sharing that Ziggy!!!!!

Well, I paid about R3 000 for the x-ray, antibiotic+tetanus shot and doc... I actually told them I wanted a discount as they used my tools. They replied: "Well your discount was used to pay for the pair of tweezers that we broke trying to remove the hook!". Bastid!   

[bassbug]

a porra would say: "for this"

[WalkersKiller]

Hectic stuff Marcos!

[Prego]

These things happen so quick, glad there was no serious damage.

Did it penetrate the bone Marcos?

[John F]

Nope. He was quite lucky... no bones, tendons or other sensitive parts were affected.