A lucky fish story
Will Fransen liked to fish and he liked to be out on his own in a boat with just the Pacific ocean around him. The 61-year-old explained that he departed on a solo fishing trip on his 36-foot boat Tuesday from New Zealand’s North Island. He had a couple of lines going as the boat drifted and something hit the one rod. He struggled for a while to get a big Marlin to the side of the boat. When he finally did, Fransen reached in holding the line to pull the fish in and lost his balance and fell over the railing and into the sea. Will is a pretty good swimmer so he came back up and tried to find the boat, but it was drifting away from him. “I grabbed the line with the marlin attached and started pulling the line out. I tried pulling my way back towards the boat only to have the line slip out of my hand, which is pretty gutting, because next thing my boat’s idling over the horizon and I’m treading water,” he told the New Zealand Herald. “When I went in the water I knew the chances of somebody even knowing I was in the water were pretty slim. I was pretty pessimistic from the outset,” Will told the New Zealand Herald. “I just kept staying alive.” He was wearing a harness that offered some buoyancy, then floated south near Mayor Island.
Fortunately the next day three other fisherman came to those waters. “We set out in the early morning and got through to the afternoon and we sort of saw a glistening, probably 600 meters away from the boat at the time. As we got closer, I think it was Max who said, ‘I think that’s a person’ and it was actually me who said, ‘Surely not.’ I mean, we were 10 miles off the back of Mayor Island and not a boat in sight, but sure enough, as we got closer, it was quite obvious that someone was waving their arms.” Will Fransen was pulled out of the sea on Wednesday after a trio of fisherman “noticed an unusual reflection on the water” and ultimately “They discovered a fellow fisherman desperately trying to get their attention using the reflection of the sun on his watch,” according to Whangamatā Police Sgt. Will Hamilton. “He endured a cold night in the ocean, too exhausted to keep swimming. During his time in the water, even a shark came to ‘have a sniff,’ before leaving,” Hamilton added. Fransen was eventually rescued after spending about 23.5 hours in the water, police say. One of the fishermen who helped save him Max White, said that his colleague “saw a glimmer of what ended up being the reflection from Will’s watch ” and that Fransen was “super cold” and “severely dehydrated.” After receiving treatment at a local hospital, Fransen said he had a meal from McDonald’s and a Heineken beer. “It is an absolute miracle the fisherman is still alive after the ordeal,” Hamilton said. “Without the quick actions of the three gentlemen that retrieved him, this certainly would have had a tragic outcome.” Police say the current whereabouts of Fransen’s boat remains unknown. “The boat may be missing, but the fisherman still has his watch.”
Boating bungles
So, why do scuba divers fall backwards out of the boat?
Because if they fell forward, they’d still be in the boat.
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day.
While fishing off the Florida coast, a tourist capsized his boat. He could swim, but his fear of alligators kept him clinging to the overturned craft. Spotting an old beachcomber standing on the shore, the tourist shouted:
“Are there any gators around here?”
“No,” the man hollered back, “they ain’t been ‘round for years!”
Feeling safe, the tourist started swimming leisurely toward the shore. About halfway there he asked the guy: “Hey, how did you get rid of the gators?”
“We didn’t do nothin’,” the beachcomber said. “The sharks got ’em.”
What’s with the sudden influx of Killer Whale attacks on boats?
Seems Orcastrated.
February 16th Birthdays
1974 – Kimberly Dawn Whipany, 1990 – Elizabeth Olsen, 1971 – Amanda Holden, 1985 – Stacy Lewis
1989 – Kim Su Hyun 1958 – Ice T, 1959 – John McEnroe, 1936 – Carl Icahn