First time cruisers to Maine take note

Tim R. · Jul 23, 2011

Forget the pots. The really dangers are sea monsters, chupacabras and if you sail east far enough, you will sail off the end of the world.

Tim R. · Jul 23, 2011

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Avoiding pot buoys really is not all that stressfull or difficult.

And do not think that all lobsterman will run you down. Most are very courteous if you acknowledge them with a wave and attempt to stay out of their way.

And while you are in Maine, eat as much lobster as you can!

Maine Sail · Jul 23, 2011

Good post it should help keep the faint of heart away...

Actually the number of traps has remained quite constant as their are trap limits set by the state and they vary by zone. If anything the number of traps is less than it was before we had trap limits.

They also limit the number of commercial licenses. What has change slightly is the lobstermen are now aided by computers and equipment that can now track the bugs better, and, they go where the bugs are. This is why some areas seem so thick and it appears there are more traps. The record catch was with the same trap limits we've had for years. It was just a great year for bugs.

As an ex-commercial lobsterman I would suggest a hook knife as your first line of defense. Sailors Solutions sells them and they WORK. The WORST thing you can do to a lobsterman is to spend time trying to free his gear from your boat while the wind or current are dragging his string across 6 or 7 other strings.

Cutting a $4.00 pot buoy is much less costly to the fisherman than dragging his string over multiple other guys and costing them hours of work untangling and hundreds of feet of warp..

These guys almost ALWAYS run a pot buoy at either end of string and the odds both will be cut are extremely rare. Never happened to me and I fished traps at the mouth of the Piscataqua river in NH/Maine which is and was very heavily traveled.

As Tim said sailing among them is not difficult but does require more attention than most are used to if you;re not from Maine. We hook only one maybe every two years or so and it is usually on the rudder.

The worst thing is the floating warp that gets sucked off the beaches and back into the water after a moon tide. This warp was often discarded when lobsterman were dealing with string tangles, often caused by boaters dragging their gear across the bottom.. Thankfully floating warp has been banned but there is still plenty of it out there on shorelines that wind up back int he bays after a moon tide. If you hit it you'll have never seen it until it is too late and Spurs and shaft cutters DO NOT always work on these balls of poly line, nor do hook knifes....

I personally dislike line cutters and no longer use them as they are not 100% effective. I actually cut myself very badly when I had to dive on one and it was about 1cm from my main artery in my wrist. They can be VERY dangerous if they fail to cut the line and you need to dive.

When diving it is a good idea to wear a dive hood to lessen the impact of head bangs on the underside of the hull. I once tore a huge chunk of skin off my head when the hull came smashing down on it in lumpy seas. I also always dive with the knife on a lanyard and a safety line tied to a stern cleat. that I can grab easily if off shore or in lots of current. Drooping a dock line from the port stern cleat to stbd stern cleat under the boat fore of the rudder, on fin keels, gives you a good place to hang onto while cutting line from the prop. This can work on full keels too but you just need to go deeper with the line.

Rich Stidger · Jul 23, 2011

As a five-time Maine cruiser, I concur with Rick's assessment of the lobster pots. However, I think Tim is correct in that these pots are manageable in daylight, BUT you must know how to "read" the pots. That is as Rick says, you need to identify the toggles and the pots, and how the wind and current causes them to lay on the water.

Never, never try to go between a toggle and pot, you WILL be snagged.

At night in harbors use a bright light and go very slow.

IMO, a greater danger is pieces of line that are floating in the water and not secured to a trap. These will wind up on you prop if you are motoring and effectively disable you. Line cutters are ineffective because a line cutter needs the line to be attached to some point so it can pull the line tight and cut it. A floating line will simply wrap up around your prop. Trust me on this..... See the pictures- I picked up this line after leaving Bar Harbor. I had to return and have a diver remove it. It was near dusk, never saw it, never had a chance to avoid it.

Maine Sail · Jul 23, 2011

More info..

When sailboats snag a pot on a shaft or rudder, and think they are doing a favor by trying to get it off without cutting it, they usually are only making it worse.

Wire traps are very light weight and dragging ten of them is no problem for a boat with sails up or one in wind and current. Often times what happens is the boat drifts, and drags the the string across a few others. This makes a HUGE, HUGE mess!!
I used to run pot buoys on both ends of my string, as most all fisherman do. Not once did I ever loose both ends at the same time. Replacing a pot buoy is FAR cheaper than loosing 300 feet of warp to a tangle and the time involved in re-rigging a string..

As far as toggles go the old excuse is that they are used to keep the line from tangling the bottom or a rock. This is pure BS!! This excuse is worn out and is not even close to why they actually use them. Most fisherman use them out of habit & history and because the more they use them the more pot buoys they lose due to line cuts. It is a self fulfilling/defeating idea. If they used no toggles as they do in Casco Bay they would lose a LOT less pot buoys. Sadly old habits die hard and fishermen are a stale & crusty old bunch whom are also very, very resistant to change. They keep using toggles so that when the main pot buoy gets cut they can still boat hook the toggle.

If you want to see just how much BS the "keep the line off the bottom theory is" just note how many of the toggles are still floating & laying rather flat on the surface at high tide. By "theory" that toggle should be 10-14 feel below the surface at high tide to keep the line off the bottom.

I have actually argued against the use of these toggles, from a boater safety standpoint, and as an ex-commercial fisherman, to my state Senator, but he was unwilling to submit a bill to ban them. There is ZERO legitimate reason for their use, they way they are currently used, and they only lead to more pot buoys being cut off. Thus the fisherman think they are a good idea and the viscous circle begins again..

Far less pot buoys are cut off in areas where they don't use them. In my thousands & thousands of pulls, without toggles, I never once had a line snag the bottom, ever. Toggles are pure BS!

Here are a few tips on how to deal with lobster pots.

#1 ALWAYS try to pass to the down current, down wind or down tide side of the pot. Never intentionally pass above a lobster pot unless you absolutely know you have the room to do so! They have an uncanny way of letting you know which way is up current, wind or tide and which way is down. Follow the stick or the wake!

This one is pointing or angled towards "down tide" so you'll pass to where the stick leans or points. This is about a 1.5 knot current at the mouth of Penobscot Bay and well off Vinalhaven and Northhaven Islands. We were miles from the nearest land yet Pen Bay has HUGE amounts of water to spill and the currents can run miles out to sea.. NEVER EVER intentionally pass a pot like this to the up tide or up current side!!!

#2 Wear polarized sunglasses!!! My daughter had grabbed my Maui Jim's and got "snack goo" all over them. Rather than clean them I stupidly grabbed my "guest" pair of sunglasses, a non-polarized pair of Ray Ban's.

As you can see we almost hit this pot that was pulled under by the tidal current! My maneuver was late because I never saw it until the absolute last second. At that point I had no choice but to turn hard stbd and pass to the up-current side which as you can see could have been very dangerous. Again, WEAR POLARIZED SUNGLASSES! You will see these submerged pots well before you will with non-polarized glasses. My camera had a polarizing filter so I snapped that as we passed.

#3 just because it's calm does not mean the pots are not still trying to tell you something. Current & tide still exists even in flat glass conditions. Note the direction of the "sticks"...

#4 It may be calm but this pot has a decent current flowing by it. Just look at the "wake" made by the buoy..

I passed too close to a lobster guy and he was swearing at me and really pissed how do I avoid pissing these guys off?

Look for his or her "colors" then spot his/her pots on the water and as a courtesy, and for your own safety, these guys are cowboys, get away from them as the boat is likely moving to the next pot that matches the displayed colors!

Lobstermen are required to display their "colors" or one of their own pot buoys mounted up high on the boat so it can be seen.
Note the pot buoy above the radome:

Note the "colors" on the port side wheel house roof:

Note the "colors" laying on the wheel house roof behind the spot light & hanging dead center also look on the water and you'll see two more of his/her pots.. stay away from them:

Pot buoy/colors located on stern end port side of wheel house roof:

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sailaway78 · Jul 23, 2011

The same here

I don't know if we have more crab traps than you guys have lobster pots or not, but we have a lot of them. One of the big problems in Lake Ponchatrain is the locals here have no problem with running a string across a channel. This coupled with the various colors used, lot of black ones, which make them very difficult to see, makes alertness a necessity, but they can be avoided. My biggest complaint is Lake Ponchatrain, with the New Orleans skyliine as a back drop, would be a wonderful place for night sailing. Virtually no obstructions, and a pretty consistent bottom depth. But the traps just make this a challenge that most are not willing to accept.

s sauer · Jul 23, 2011

Chesapeake Bay crab pots

We experience some areas with significant concentrations of crab pots, but always able to be avoided under power and usually under sail unless it's light air racing in drifting conditions with a tide running.

I sail at night but with a folding prop and a deep fin keel , have never picked up a pot. The slot between the rudder and the hull is theoretically a problem area, but the line usually drags along the hull , then jumps up to the shaft and folding prop, so if it hits the rudder it tends not to ride up into the slot. I've hooked up only two crab pots on the rudder of my previous shoal draft H25 and easily cleared them without cutting them off.

I'm very much against any type of spurs or line cutters in the Bay propper, as crab pots are individual to each crab trap, so when you cut one off the trap is 'lost' and that's someone else's livelihood. In the rivers, trot lines are bouyed at each end with larger 'pots', so if you cross near the pots you may catch the trot line. If you cross nearer the middle the line is too deep to catch. Obviously Maine may be a completely different story, and the hook knofe sounds like the right solution if used judiciously.

kloudie1 · Jul 23, 2011

AS Nice&Easy says, the Ponchartrain has a LOT of Crab pots. I thought that the flood water from the Mississippi would stop the pots for a while, but apparently not.. I was looking forward to some night sailing without the pot lookout intensity.. Apparently, the crabs don't seem to mind too much.. and the pots are still there..

Maine Sail · Jul 24, 2011

To give you guys a better understanding of the process, and why it is so critical that we do NOT drag a string over another one if we hook it, I made a short video.

In the video you will see the pot buoy trailing behind the lobster boat as he orients himself to lay his string. In this particular area all the strings are laid SW to NE. You can see by the sheer number of pot buoy's which indicates just how many of these "strings" are actually on the bottom and why it is critically important we don't drag them if we hook them.

This guy is laying a five pot string and like most every lobsterman on the Maine Coast he runs two pot buoy's, one at either end of the string. Cutting a pot buoy is far less damaging than a string entanglement, at least it was to me.

dscribner · Jul 24, 2011

I have always taken offense to companies offering line cutters, hook knives, shaft blades and the like. I know I'm on the bottom edge of the sailing/cruising brotherhood, but I have real problems with flagrantly cutting a man's livelihood so I can continue merrily on my way in my high priced toy doing basically nothing but recreate. As useful as these cutters must be, I fear they might encourage casually running over another man's property. Suppose the lobsterman had a single float. Now a string of expensive pots and many feet of warp are junk on the sea floor with trapped animals inside waiting to die uselessly. MaineSail's explanation of the dual float/ multi pot setup helps some, but I think that every effort to free the line, saving both float and warp, then tying them back together, should be made. Granted, I've never had the pleasure and experience has a way of altering a man's perspective. After all, how many childless couples know exactly what us parents are doing wrong?

Fair Winds . . . and clear waters,

Don

Maine Sail · Jul 24, 2011

dscribner said:
I have always taken offense to companies offering line cutters, hook knives, shaft blades and the like. I know I'm on the bottom edge of the sailing/cruising brotherhood, but I have real problems with flagrantly cutting a man's livelihood so I can continue merrily on my way in my high priced toy doing basically nothing but recreate. As useful as these cutters must be, I fear they might encourage casually running over another man's property. Suppose the lobsterman had a single float. Now a string of expensive pots and many feet of warp are junk on the sea floor with trapped animals inside waiting to die uselessly. MaineSail's explanation of the dual float/ multi pot setup helps some, but I think that every effort to free the line, saving both float and warp, then tying them back together, should be made. Granted, I've never had the pleasure and experience has a way of altering a man's perspective. After all, how many childless couples know exactly what us parents are doing wrong?

Fair Winds . . . and clear waters,

Don

Don,

Obviously the best approach is to get off as quickly as possible and not cut gear. The second best alternative, speaking from the perspective as one who was a commercial lobsterman, is to cut it before you drag the string across another one!

When under sail there are very few circumstances, other than an immediate turn, or to slide it off the rudder with a boat hook very quickly, that you would not be dragging a string. Dragging a string is almost always far more costly in gear and time and involves multiple fisherman, not just one.

Any lobsterman running strings and single pot buoy's is just plain dumb. Losing pot buoy's is part of the job. I used to paint 40 extra for each season. Lobsterman lose gear to their own at a rate far greater than us pleasure boaters cause. The turf wars are real and some of these guys think nothing of stuffing your gear. I lost WAY more gear to other fisherman than pleasure craft. My mother used to watch via binocular early in the mornings and witnessed a boat out of Seabrook haul one of my strings, stuff my buoy's inside the pot and send it back over. The name of the boat was "Nasty Habbits"... It's how that industry works and you simply deal with it. Some guys are A-Holes and most are decent....

Stu Jackson · Jul 24, 2011

My father-in-law's crab trap, with 150 feet of line and the trap was stolen. Three times!!! From right in front of his house. Nasty poachers. But the commercial guys sometimes get mad at the "recreational" crabbers. Sucks, doesn't' it?

Really, Don, Maine Sail's experiences and the story he tells in this thread about the realities of boating and traps pretty much explain the realities of how to deal with them.

dscribner · Jul 24, 2011

I'm not saying that Maine's explanation or instruction is incorrect. I'm just saying how I see it. And, I'm also pointing out that I have a limited perspective on the subject. I sail Mainsail's backyard (or he mine) but with a smaller boat, and an outboard. I'd just hang my sorry butt over the stern and free the line from the prop, if I were dumb enough to, say, back over my painter, hypothetically speaking of course. Twice. So I can imagine what a major pain in the anatomy it must be down below one of the big girls. It's just the ads about freeing yourself from those "pesky lobster buoys".

Prime Time · Jul 24, 2011

They are a Hazard

Last summer we cruised from NJ up to Penobscot Bay. In the fog and at night, the lobster pots are a real hazard to navigation. They are placed without regard to the channel. I appreciate the need for lobstermen to make a living, but now about avoiding the channel? Even in day light, it can be a problem. Tenant Harbor was about the worst! At least the lobster there is great!

I'm going to be putting a line cutter on my shaft. I am very careful to avoid lobster pots and fishing traps, but do the commercial fishermen give us the same consideration by "mining" the channels?

Ross · Jul 24, 2011

Re: They are a Hazard

My boat has a continuous smooth run from the bow to the stern with an attached rudder and a long slope on the forward end of the keel. The prop is in an apperture. In ten years of boating through Chesapeake Bay crab pots I have never snaged one although I have had pot bouys bump along the hull. Some of the shapes I have seen of the underside of boats reminds me of grapnels well designed to snag anything in the water.

TomY · Jul 25, 2011

Ross said:
My boat has a continuous smooth run from the bow to the stern with an attached rudder and a long slope on the forward end of the keel. The prop is in an apperture. In ten years of boating through Chesapeake Bay crab pots I have never snaged one although I have had pot bouys bump along the hull. Some of the shapes I have seen of the underside of boats reminds me of grapnels well designed to snag anything in the water.

I sail with a full keel and attached rudder too. They help a lot. Over nearly 20 years of sailing on the coast of maine, I would guess I've hooked 6 pots. Truth is, I don't pay much attention to them under sail and hit them regularly. Amazingly, I have hooked a couple on the blade of the prop though.

The good thing sailing is, you can pretty easily unhook if you think it through. Don't panic.

It's one loop of warp over a blade. Usually just reversing the tack will do it. This can mean tacking, or dropping the sails and backwinding the jib (or in my case, the mizzen) to put the loop of warp on the upwind side. Off it goes and you're on your way.

I don't like powering at night around pots but sailing is little problem with my boat. Sailing as much as possible minimizes pot problems for all boats. Wrapped around a prop is a problem.

RichH · Jul 29, 2011

I just made a passage from way down east to MDI and further west. I attempted to pass through the Casco Passage and enter the Eggemoggin Reach ... Utter Insanity on the Jericho Bay side of the Casco Passage.

Current flow was at 90° to the winds, trap lines were only ~50 ft. apart ... and the toggles were buoyed with 30+feet of line. Impossible to sail upwind through the traps, almost next to impossible to motor through. The narrow Casco Passage itself was 'terrible' with floats/toggles blocking the narrow channel.

In the late 80s and early 90s the Chesapeake had a similar 'problem', especially at the mouths of creeks and river entrances - inability to navigate through the 'minefields' of traps. No amount of public scorn, uproar or protest resulted in a remedy .... until a state 'powerbroker' (high placed legislator) fouled on a pot line and his boat was severely damage when it subsequently went 'ashore' also caused minor injuries to some onboard .... immediately followed by the institution of 'float free navigation areas' - state buoyed areas/channels where crab traps were totally excluded. Putting 'pots' in such areas resulted in fines or confiscation of the 'pots'.
At that time almost the entire northern Chesapeake had a density of crab traps at ~1 trap (@1 float per trap) per 150 sq. ft., ... they apparently caught ALL the crabs and the crab harvest plummeted to a near catastrophe (another 'solution' to over-fishing).

Sailing in Maine waters is indeed 'prime sailing' with the exception of those areas where you can walk across entire lobstering areas that are so thick with traps that you can almost walk on top of the water from float to float without getting your feet wet. And just like the what happened in the Chesapeake this will continue until some mighty 'powerbroker' endures severe damage and/or injury due to the insanity.

Stu Jackson · Jul 29, 2011

Let's buy the senators from Maine a boat!

First time cruisers to Maine take note

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