The Crew Of A Commercial Fishing Boat [FICTOID]

“We snagged the battleship.”

“Again?!?!?”

“Again.”

Captain Villard swore mightily then asked, “Didn’t we follow the charts and GPS?”

“Aye,” said Stumpy, his first mate.  “Only we didn’t allow for a shift in the currents.  It pulled our nets over and snagged them on the wreck.”

Captain Villard swore some more.  Salmon fishing was a tough game with narrow profit margins.  Snagging nets on underwater wrecks cost thousands of dollars -- not to mention losing a catch and heavy fines for desecrating a war grave if caught too near the suken battleship.

They went down over a century ago, Villard thought.  Surely they shouldn’t fine us after all that time.

The crew cut loose the cables to the net and the tense lines let up with a loud “whoosh!”

Captain Villard took the wheel and headed north, hoping to get away before any Coast Guyard vessel came to see what they were doing so near the wreck.

What a colossal screw up, he thought.

The crew coiled up the severed cable on the mahogany desk.  One of them took a paddle from the life raft to try to leverage the heavy cable off the winch, but the aluminum paddle buckled under the weight.

Stumpy came back on the bridge with a printout in his undamaged hand.  “Coast Guard cutter wants us to slow down and be inspected,” he said.  “And weather reports say a storm is gathering.”

Captain Villard sighed,  Better show some vertebrae,/// he thought, ///but this is one helluva way to start a day before breakfast.

© Buzz Dixon