We have just come back from a long weekend on the West Coast of Tasmania, specifically at Couta Rocks. We were staying at a friends shack which sits right on the waters edge and when you add to that the gorgeous sunny weather, it was a little like heaven.
Our friends neighbours just happens to be a cray fisherman which not only meant we where treated to a couple of feeds of my favourite food, but we also got to spend a few hours on the boat watching them pull the pots in and then put them out again. The deckhand and the skipper had it all down pat and although we thought about asking if we could help, I think we just would have been in the way.
We could all learn from their meticulous system, which would only have come about by planning it that way. We watched as they hooked each buoy denoting a cray pot out of the water, passing the ropes & buoys through the winch system, laying the rope just so while the winch pulled the pots to the boats edge, the pots were then placed on the deck, the crayfish removed and put in the hull, the bait replaced and the pot then stacked with the rest on the boat – ready to be heaved over the side when the time came. We watched the boat fill with 50 pots over a couple of hours, even having to move from our vantage point to make more room. Once all the pots where on board it was time to put them out again – because they had been re-baited each time and the rope had been laid ‘just so’, throwing them over in the when the skipper gave the nod was a simple task. Not once did we see any snags or rope tangles, each pot went over board followed by its rope and finally its buoy to mark its position.
With out the planning that has gone into this system over years, there would have been rope tangles and delays – but what we witnessed was a well oiled machine, one we can only hope to emulate. The first step is planning, the skipper didn’t just wake up one day and decide to head out into the ocean to catch some crayfish – he had to have a boat, a cray licence, a deck hand, some cray pots and a plan to put it all together!
So have you got your planning done for 2014? If not, why not come along next week, 6th February 2014 and spend the day with us. 10 businesses did just that last week and now they have a road map for 2014 and a big list of ideas to pursue in their marketing. You can register and watch a couple of testimonials over here.