Career Opportunities

A tale from the high seas from the weekend just past.

It was for a mate's stag do, we were up at Leigh staying the night, and the afternoon was to go out on a chartered boat, catch a few snapper or maomao, drink some beer and tell lies, before going back to Leigh and wrecking other's nights.

The boat was priceless. It was filthy, badly maintained and a complete shambles. The skipper gave a sloppy safety briefing, introduced the two deckhands (one male cro-magnon, one female untouchable).

We set out, just off shore the skipper drops the pick, cuts the motor and it's fishing time.
Normally on a charter they have some tackle, hooks, sinkers, etc. The role of the deckhands on charter boats is to look after the customers, rig gear, bait hooks, clean the fish later, etc.

But not on this boat.

So, first up the tackle box was a shambles, no sinkers of any consequence, and a manky hook collection.

I'd taken two of my rods, and we had several other rods as well. Also, on board there were two baited rods set to go. So, one of our chaps grabs one of the baited rods, and gets promptly told by the deckie male that rod was his and to hand it over. We then had to fend for ourselves. We had to rig our own gear, bait our own hooks, remove our own fish (when we finally caught some)
A bit of scorn and vitriol was dished out to the deckies, who just ignored it and carrying on fishing from the best spot on the boat.

The fishing where we were anchored was worse than poor, but the skipper didn't care until we got stroppy, then he moved to another small reef.

By now the deckies had buggered off up to the bow to get away from the stream of snide comments. Next thing, they are drinking bourbon and coke, throwing the cans overboard and smoking dope.

The fishing was still average.

So, one of our chaps tells the skipper we were hungry, so skipper fires up the BBQ and starts cooking up the sausages, steak, etc that we supplied. As soon as the first stuff is cooked, the female thing comes back and makes up a couple of tasty combos in the buns, places them on plates and get's asked if that was for us. Ignores that and retreats to the bow again
to eat OUR food.

The fishing was still crap.

Eventually, we fished for 5 hours and caught 2 maomao and 6 smallish snapper, pitiful really.
Motoring back in, two of us set to and cleaned the fish (normally the deckie's job), when we get into port the female deckie asks if she could take a couple of the fish. Understandably this request got a negative response, so her, the other deckie and skipper got damn hostile at us.
It was wonderful.

The evening that followed exceeded the day for encounters with strange people.