Trip Tonight - Spaces Available

[skip]

We are heading out tonight at around 7pm towards Jerma point and then heading out some miles to drift and chum looking for those escaped tuna. I know its short notice, however we do have a couple of free spaces on the boat and chances of anyone reading this in time are slim to none.

The intention is come back tomorrow (Sunday 3rd) in the late afternoon or when everyone has had enough.

If you'd like to join, you need to cater (food wise) for yourselves and around Lm15 towards fuel depending on final numbers that may go down, have between 2-3 spaces free.

Dep/Return Portomaso Marina, msg me if interested. Sorry for the late notice. In future anyone who is interested in something like the above, pm your mobile numbers and I can advise of such trips by sms.

Target is Tuna and if nothing by late morning, switch for lampuki.

Skip

[ciappinu]

Good Luck Guys!

We saw a large Tuna chunk yesterday floating around 6 miles out from Bahrija. It was a lower body part, close to the tail. The Tuna probably weighed around 100 kilos, if not more, when alive. The chunk by itself weighed in the 20-30kgs range. It looked a little yellowish, but I think it was a commonl Tuna.

Before that we also saw an extremely Massive fish jump out of the water infront of us. Probably either some very large kind of dolphin, or a baby whale. Truly amazing. I'd say it was a 400kf fish, if not more. We also had a shark encounter. The sea was very clear and we were running around a FAD, when we could see this shark coming up right at us from the bottom. He swam a little around the fad, then vanished. All this in the Filfla, Dingli area. Incredible, but true. You'll have to be there to believe it I guess.

Towards the end of our trip we saw what looked like a swordfish, or maybe an "Imsella Imperjali" I believed it's called. About 4 feet long and it was jumping out of the water. Very common for that area.

An eventful day as you see! With regards to catches, not so eventful, but ok. Only 1 lampuka, 2 cerviol and 1 tumbrella. I lost one good sized lampuka at the boat too, it broke the line. My belief is 1 fish, and the day is done! Like that I'm not too often dissapointed.

[sergio]

i saw you guys on the never say die last saturday ! i was walking in portomaso at about midnight. nice boat bdw ! any catches ?

[skip]

Sergio, come and say hello next time, don't be shy. Well Lady luck was not on our side.....and it's quite a story.

I don't know how superstitious anyone is but the day didn't start well with various ppl cancelling/not being able to make it. Then we had problems locating Kavalli for bait, even though a couple of fish shops said they had. After numerous attempts we settled for sardines.

Arrived at the boat at 8pm and it all went from bad to worse after that....we decided to be completely prepared and spent a few hours rigging up some new fishing rigs and checking over the engines topping up fluids. Drive oil levels were low on both and that's when I discovered I had bought the wrong drive oil, Premium blend instead of high performance!

We drained the water separating filters and topped up the engine oil and by around 11pm we were ready to rock and roll. Got both engines up to idle, knowing we were very low on fuel and well into the reserve, it was only about 2mins before both died........zero fuel. For the first time ever I had run out of fuel and luckily we hadn't cast off the lines. We filled around 6 litres from a jerry can and went to buy another 10litres, topped that in but upon trying to crank the stbd engine there was the worst noise in the world coming from it. Kind of like a high pitched scream, metal to metal sound. Not good.

Further investigation revealed the sea water cooling pump driven off the main serpentine belt wasn't turning. We'd had bearing failure followed by the impeller disintegrating. And that folks, ended our chances of going out Two engines are better than one, but not worth the risk at night.

Fin worked till around 1.30am trying to remove the offending pump, so possibily at midnight he was in the engine bay swearing when you passed. The pump was picked up and will now be overhauled, new bearing,oil seals, wear plate and of course impeller. It seems a worn o ring seal allowed sea water to enter the bearing housing and that caused the bearing to rust over time and finally fail. We did have some warning, whining coming from that engine, but an odd noise to pinpoint for the past few trips but I thought it was just a loose belt

We were all back home by 2.30am never having left

[sergio]

damn that sucks dude ! i know the feeling , about a month ago my friends and i were going fishing and the outboard wouldnt start although your story seems to be much worse better luck next time i guess !

[jiggy]

hi skip
i just saw that messege about that trip..well im interested if your goin out for a big fishing ill come..the thing is that i never went with a boat like that cos mine is small and i dont have enough experience,but i wish to try and learn something eee :)what do you think?is it possible?
thanks a lot