Shaft cutters

Here's ours.

FF said:

Cutters
Genset chargers
Active stabilizers
AIS
Twin engines
SD hulls
Large fuel tanks
Anchors and rode
3 stage fuel filters
Vessels over XX length
Electronic diesels
Etc



Many are desirements that justify never leaning the dock.

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I gothca FF; I forgot to add other items some think frivolous such as flush toilets, an electric refrigerator, a water heater , AC, diesel heat, bow thruster, induction cooktop, fly bridge, chain rode and lap top based chart plotting. With these items in addition to my earlier abbreviated list, leaving the dock as frequently as possible is much enabled.

Now, about that HDTV dome receiver choice?

Unless things have changed, I don't believe they are necessary for your trip. I did that route in 2000 and saw no need. You'll be in large ship waters most of the time and waters unsuited for lobstering.
Nonetheless you are in for a great cruise.

All that gear , and no mention of a book to read!

"Away from it all" by Sloan Wilson.

I had two major tangles with a pot line and a net in 7 years and since addng shaft sharks 8 years ago.....nothing. Maybe luck, maybe not. I figure that if they save me from one dangerous situation they are a great investment. As I get older and less interested in diving into freezing water to cut lines off my prop, certain options on my boat have become more important than others.

Larmex99 said:

I figure that if they save me from one dangerous situation they are a great investment.

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I totally understand that logic. But by similar logic, what if they actually increase the likelihood of snagging a line? From my experience, they do. There's also something to be considered with the reduction in prop efficiency they create. I fully admit that the estimates I've seen show it to only reduce efficiency by 1-2% but over a decade of many miles, that can add up to more than a couple of beers.

For whatever reason, cutters give some people peace of mind. I think that's great. I hope that my alternative views only help to make those people continue to have that peace of mind while continuing to be extra careful around dangerous floating lines and pots. I hate to see anyone tangled in them and I also hate to see the potential equipment loss by the people who make their living out on the water.

Greetings,
Mr. AC. +1

"....what if they actually increase the likelihood of snagging a line?"
From my experience they don't.

"I also hate to see the potential equipment loss by the people who make their living out on the water."

Me too, but if their equipment gets tangled in my prop, they're going to lose it whether I dive over and risk my life cutting it off with a knife or my Spurs cut it off for me.

A bit off topic, but up in the NE, Chesapeake, and down in the Keys- you have to wonder just how many traps are needed to catch every critter crawling on the bottom. If you put a zillion pots out there, are you really going to catch that many more critters?? Put a zillion more out there, going to catch more??? The bottom must be nothing but pots!!! Some places it is near impossible to nav through that clog of pots. Same number of critters down there. Or there were...

FF said:

All that gear , and no mention of a book to read!

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Ahh, but I have 37 instruction books to keep me occupied, Now which one is for the Autopilot gain as I try to adjust for the following sea?

ActiveCaptain said:

I fully admit that the estimates I've seen show it to only reduce efficiency by 1-2% but over a decade of many miles, that can add up to more than a couple of beers.

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If one really wants to burn up fuel and lose efficiency, try idling around picking up crab pots from the back of a DeFever. Or the least efficient decision of all, buy a boat! Sheesh AC.

Ski in NC said:

A bit off topic, but up in the NE, Chesapeake, and down in the Keys- you have to wonder just how many traps are needed to catch every critter crawling on the bottom. If you put a zillion pots out there, are you really going to catch that many more critters?? Put a zillion more out there, going to catch more??? The bottom must be nothing but pots!!! Some places it is near impossible to nav through that clog of pots. Same number of critters down there. Or there were...

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Compared to Maine, the Chesapeake, Keys, Canada, and the rest of the NE are free and clear of traps. Maine seems to have a unique approach to this which I don't understand. I'm all for lobstering, but I don't understand why complete obstruction of the waterways is tolerated in Maine.

HopCar said:

...but if their equipment gets tangled in my prop, they're going to lose it whether I dive over and risk my life cutting it off with a knife or my Spurs cut it off for me.

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Not to be argumentative, but 40% of the time I cut pot buoys off boat shafts, I was able to tie the buoy back to the line leading to the trap. About 50% of the time the buoy and trap line were totally destroyed or missing. And the remaining 10% were when the trap line was cut but the buoy was still whole and attached to the shaft. Those got cut and ended up on my backyard fence which has a very nice collection of Maine painted pot buoys right now (it's an offense subject to fine to take them too - I keep them out of street view).

twistedtree said:

I'm all for lobstering, but I don't understand why complete obstruction of the waterways is tolerated in Maine.

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It's our way of keeping people "from away," away.

At many times of the year, lobsters move to deeper water because the shallow water is "warming up." The deeper water will be in the channel. The lobstermen feel that it's their right to fish there. And it is.

For commercial lobstermen, cutting a buoy from the trap line won't lose the $100 worth of equipment. It's tied to another trap and accessible another way. They just lose the $4 buoy. And you'd be shocked at how few buoys are snagged by boats (even in channels).

The Penobscot Bay is by far the largest concentration of lobstering in the state of Maine - my home bay. When I did diving for the TowBoat US owner for the Penobscot Bay franchise, the biggest season was about 12 dives for June, July, and August. There is no SeaTow but a couple of other boatyards will come out and dive. Still, TowBoat US must have gotten at least half the business. Figure another 100% were handled by owners diving on their boat (it's 50-63 degree water which is tough unless you have a wetsuit). There's just not that many snags. It's pretty hard to pick one up especially if you know the very basics of avoiding them.

The particular problem I ran into (pun intended) was a combination of sea chop, sun in my eyes, and toggle rigging. Without a toggle, you just run to one side or the other of the buoy, and I agree that it's actually pretty hard to pick one up. As a kid I have to confess to expressly trying and never succeeding. But the toggles are killers. For those who haven't seen them before, each buoy has it's mate, and they are tied together with a line at or near the surface. Run between them and it's curtains. With the sun in your eyes and a little chop, the buoys appear and disappear so are hard to keep an eye on, and even harder to figure out who's paired with who. I didn't spot one pair until I was on top of them right in between the two buoys.

Single vs twin debate: In the lobster pot snag division, single wins hands down. Twin screws are like magnets in lobsterpot land.

Penobscot Bay bay is a mine field of pots,partly because of state of Maine fishing regs. Multi pot strings of traps, called"trawls" are limited to 2 pots in maine (or used to be anyway). so each trawl would have 2 buoys, one on each end. In Massachusetts, trawls are 10 pots per trawl, still with 2 buoys per trawl. I don't know of New Hampshire, Rhode Island or Connecticuts trawl limits.

The lobstermen I used to know had 2 schools of thought on line cutters.
One side would rather them get cut relatively clean, so the whole trawl wouldn't get dragged. It would be easier to grapple/ recover.
The other side condemned cutters altogether.
I was capt on a 100' single screw tug running out of Rockland Maine for a couple years. We would tow a loaded cement barge out and bring back light (empty). The chain towing bridle picked up many more pot buoys than we ever got in the wheel. Needless to say, the lobsterman were not fans of ours.

If you put a zillion pots out there, are you really going to catch that many more critters??

YES , tsome current thinking is that most of the critters CAN get in & out of the trap.

So its just an extra food source for the critters and only the lazy and stoopid are hauled up.

If you are what you eat ?????

FF said:

YES , tsome current thinking is that most of the critters CAN get in & out of the trap.

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That's pretty well known now. Lobster traps don't trap the lobster. They come and go at will. Catching one is about timing and grabbing the trap at the moment they are in the trap. This video shows it pretty well:

Greetings,
What I've been told by a lobster man in Belize is they don't bait their traps. Why the lobster enters????

For shelter, they normally live in holes.