Sixty miles south of the Cayman Islands, Marc Manis leaned forward in the Captain’s chair aboard Serendipity, an eighty-foot stern trawler, adjusting the vessel’s course to keep station with its sister ship, Karma, four hundred yards to starboard. Both trawlers were headed northwest, cutting through sea-state-two wavelets barely one foot tall, traveling beneath a cloudless night sky with the temperature in the low eighties, accompanied by a light westerly breeze.
It all added up to a beautiful night for fishing. Serendipity and Karma were pair-trawling for tuna, towing a large net between them: eight hundred feet wide by five hundred feet deep, pelagic trawling through the mid-water column where the tuna were. They had been out to sea for a week and the haul thus far had been excellent, both in quantity and size, with the tuna stored in a refrigerated compartment below deck. Each fishing expedition, Manis wagered an under/over bet with his crew regarding the size of the largest fish they’d catch, with Manis always taking the over bet. Thus far, however, the largest tuna had been a few pounds shy of winning.
Serendipity’s 450 horsepower engine suddenly eased up, catching Manis’s attention. He leaned out the bridge side window, noting that the port warp—one of two tow cables attached to this side of the net—had gone slack.
Damn it!
Manis set Serendipity on autopilot and hustled aft, joining the trawler’s first mate, Kirk Murphy, who was staring at the tow cables—both had gone slack. It looked like the net had broken free of both warps. Karma would have to reel the net back in, with both trawlers returning to port for a replacement net.
Manis was about to head to the bridge to contact Karma when the tow cables dragged across the transom to the starboard side of the trawler, tension returning to the warps. Serendipity’s stern started swinging around, twisting the trawler one-eighty until it was traveling backward. To starboard, Karma was also swinging around, being pulled stern-first through the water.
Aboard Serendipity, the Gilson winches the warps were attached to began smoking as they strained against the tow cables pulling the eighty-foot trawler backward at an increasing speed.
Serendipity was a rugged, seaworthy trawler, but it wasn’t designed to travel backward at high speed, and water surged over the transom, flooding the deck and streaming into the compartments below.
Kirk Murphy probably had no idea about what was going on, but Manis knew immediately what had happened. He had caught this type of fish before.
“Release the warps!”
They needed to cut the tow lines, and fast.
Seven years ago, Manis had been aboard a trawler that had snagged a nuclear-powered submarine and the trawler had gone under. Although the captain had been able to get off a Mayday distress call and the Coast Guard had rescued the crew, it was an experience he would never forget.
Manis called down to Dan Metzger, Serendipity’s chief engineer, to start the bilge pumps, but Metzger was already on it and the bilge pumps rumbled to life. Unfortunately, the pumps couldn’t handle the amount of water rushing over the stern. Their only hope was to release the warps before Serendipity flooded or got pulled under if the submarine went deeper.
He returned his attention to the Gilson winches, as John Lojko, the lead foreman, disengaged one while Murphy tackled the other. The two winches began free-spinning, releasing the warps.
Serendipity slowed as the tow cables paid out, until both warps whipped free. The trawler drifted to a halt before moving forward again, its bow swinging around; Manis had left the engines running and the ship was still on autopilot, returning Serendipity to base course and speed.
Manis took a deep breath as his pulse began to slow.
That had been a close call, one that could have ended in disaster.
Manis praised Murphy and Lojko for their excellent response during the emergency, then relayed the same to Metzger once the bilge pumps went quiet. As Manis returned to the bridge, he realized that despite the trawler’s name, this hadn’t been their lucky night.
Then another thought occurred to him. He had definitely won the under/over bet on the largest fish they’d catch.