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This is from another site I go to.

Life, Luck and the Benefits of Being Prepared

Figured I***8217;d share a harrowing experience from Saturday. Two friends and I underwent every boater***8217;s worst nightmare, and through an amazing stretch of luck we managed to emerge unscathed. This is a long post, but it can***8217;t be told in fewer words and hold the same weight. There were things we did right and things we did wrong, but at the very least I can share my story in the hope that others may learn from it.


Around dawn on Saturday I sailed from Woods Hole with my friend Mitch on his older 20***8217; Seacraft, the Cynthia Z. Our friend John was going to cancel after being up too late, but decided to come anyway. The plan was to run out through Muskeget channel to track down some bonito, then work our way a little further south of the island in the hopes of running into some school bluefin.

The channel was a little rough; there was a short period on the waves, but nothing too bad. Right after we went through the channel we noticed a peculiar smell- almost smelled like brake fluid. We stopped, examined the engine, and didn***8217;t find anything amiss. The boat was still running fine. Not thinking anything of it, we continued on our way.

Once we got out to the fleet we set out crystal minnows and started trolling- Wasn***8217;t long before we had our first bonito. After about an hour and a half of catching nothing but bluefish in the shoal water, we decided to move southwest to start chasing BFT.

We worked our way a few miles short of the inside fingers and set out our spread. For the next few hours we just trolled with no results- didn***8217;t see any life, no busting fish or any signs of activity. I noticed that the boat was a little unresponsive- difficult to maintain course- but the Cynthia Z has notoriously stiff steering so I didn***8217;t think anything of it.

The exact sequence of events that happened next is a little tough to remember. We decided to bring in our spread and start working our way back in, as the bite never developed. We were running low on gas, so Mitch opened up the storage in the stern to retrieve his extra gas tanks to fill up. When he opened the bilge he found that it was full of water- that peculiar smell we had noticed earlier was the bilge burning out. There was no alarm on the boat, so we didn***8217;t notice the water until it had become a serious issue.

We were a little nervous at that point, but still thought we would be OK to get in. John started tinkering with the bilge- he thought that it might have been disconnected when we were going through the channel, and if he could get it rigged up we could pump out. I made an impromptu bailer out of a water jug, and busied myself with keeping the boat as dry as possible. As we were stopped and filling up the gas tanks, this started to become an exercise in futility- the weight of John in the stern meant that every fifth or sixth wave would hit the open transom of the Seacraft and wash a little water over and into the boat, and I found it very difficult to keep up. And, to add insult to injury, it was right around this point that ~40-50***8221; bluefin started erupting on halfbeaks all around the boat. It was as if they knew they were safe, and taunting us.

John couldn***8217;t get the bilge running, so once we got the engine running we decided to motor in towards Gay Head where we could get pumped out and pick up some more fuel. John and I moved everything heavy into the bow of the boat, and Mitch turned us on a course for land.