One of the best looking fishing vessels in New Zealand!

This is the fishing vessel Dorothy May. Dorothy May was built in the late 40s by Jack Gard, the well-known commercial fishing vessel boat builder. She's 55 feet. Kauri Hull, Matai, Rimu, all of those amazing timbers all come together to make the wonderful looking Dorothy May. She's currently a commercial trawler and she also undertakes albacore fishing during the summer months. She's powered by an 8L3B Gardner, which is quite a significant engine for those of you that understand marine engines. Yeah, she's been an important part of the local Nelson fishing community. Originally it was actually built for the Zamey family up in Gisborne. So they had her for a number of years as a fishing vessel and Jack Gard bought her back basically in the, I think it was the early 70s, I might be corrected on those dates, and then the Gard family took her and used her right up until approximately 2010. 2010 it was sold to Mike Troutson, the current owner of the Dorothy May. Mike was a skipper of ours and worked for Jack Gard and Gard's Fisheries for nearly 30 years and still going strong with the Dorothy May out in Tasman Bay and Golden Bay trawling and catching all of those wonderful inshore species that that you enjoy in the supermarket and some of the fish shops. So yeah, welcome to the Dorothy May and come aboard and we'll have a bit of a look around. So here we are, I'm standing up where the operator operates the trawl winches. So remember trawl winches are important to retrieve and deploy all your fishing gear. Whether it's a trawl net or trawl dredges for dredging, it doesn't really matter. These are an integral part of that system. So here's your hydraulic controls, here's what you call a reduction box, so this is what gives you the torque. You'll have a hydraulic input shaft into that, it might be doing 100, 200, 300 revs and that converts that a bit like the diff in your car, so it slows it down to maybe about 30 revs per minute, but it gives you a lot of torque and you need torque to be able to pull that gear aboard. Here's the clutch or the brake to engage or disengage the particular drum winch and here is the brake. So you'll see on here, he's actually been out fishing recently, this is all connected to the trawl net. So on here you'll have what you call bridles that are attached to the front of the net. You've got like a, if you imagine the net's there, there's your bottom bridle, there's your top bridle and then this goes off to the vessel. So on top will be the bridles, then under that will be a length of wire, anything up to 100 metres, they call the sweep and then they are hooked to the trawl doors. So we'll go down the back and we'll show you what the trawl doors are. So here you go, if you look down on the deck you'll see the rope and the chain there, so they are the bridles that we talked about that get hooked to the trawl net. So you hook those to the trawl net, they go out through these blocks up here, one on each side and then the sweeps go out and then you hook the main trawl wire to these wonderful little things. So they've got a few names, some people call them otter boards and we call them trawl boards or trawl doors. Effectively what they do, they are similar principle to an aircraft wing and what they do, you've got one on each side of the trawl gear and the second you lower those into the water hooked to your net, they spread. The hydrodynamic forces spread them and that opens up your net. So you get those open, then you slowly release more wire from the winch up there and then eventually your trawl net settles on the bottom gently and so do the trawl doors and then the fishing begins. So effectively what you're doing is you're towing a big triangle. If you can imagine the nets here, you go out to the doors and then into the boat and everything within that triangle, hopefully if you're having a good day, will end up in the net at some stage if it's the target species. So that's your trawl doors. Come down and we'll have a look at the net. Just watch your foot. So up here, this is the bag of money, well you hope it's the bag of money. So this here is the back end of the trawl net. So effectively if you can imagine a giant wind sock or something of that nature, that's effectively the trawl net and this is where you store it. This is commonly called the net roller. Keeps the nets up tidy off the deck out of the way and they're a lot safer. You know, probably 30 years ago we didn't have these. These are now all hydraulically driven which is wonderful. When I first started fishing, you threw these over and you pulled them aboard by hand and I can tell you that sorted the men out from the boys and it was a pretty dangerous occupation back then. Very physically demanding but you know with the inventive hydraulics, it allowed fishermen to put a bit of weight on, which is not necessarily a good thing. But modern technology in the fishing industry has been amazing and it helps in so many ways. Not only catching fish more sustainably and safely, but it does help with the bottom line. You'll see here that he's obviously got some spare cottons. This is where the fish collects. So he's got various spare equipment there. You know, sometimes equipment gets damaged so you've got to have spare. These here, you might see these, floats or trawl floats. So because you want the net to open, right, so you imagine it's the mouth of a big fish that's effectively a trawl fish and to achieve that opening you've got to have a little bit of weight on the bottom of the net and you've got to have flotation or floats on the top of the net like these. So effectively that opens the net, your trawl doors or otter boards spread the net and the vessel tows. You might tow for two to three or four hours and you know, you take your chances, you see what you've got, you pick it up. Shorter tows are good for great quality fish. You sort through it, you clean it, you grade it, you put it in the ice and then that's the fish that you see in the fish and chip shops or in the local market or supermarket. So you know, these little inshore boats are a really important part of the seafood cycle. They're sustainable, they're well run, well managed, very low impact and you know, I really want to see a future where we enjoy these vessels forever because they've been around a long time and they deserve to be around a lot longer. Thanks for watching and next time who knows where you'll see me on what vessel, but stay safe out there.