The pelagic trawler Venus NS 150, from the Icelandic company HB Grandi, switched to “Flipper” trawldoors and skipper Gudlaugur “Gulli” Jónsson is extremely pleased with the performance of the doors.
“Gulli” reports, he started to use the new Thyborøn 15 m² Type 20 VF “Flipper” doors in spring. They fished for blue whiting close to the Faroe Islands with all of the adjustable foils closed. Gudlaugur Jónsson was extremely pleased with the results, the wide spread and good stability of the trawldoors in turnings.
They tried different setups with the foils during mackerel fishing this summer. First they had all the foils open to reduce spreading power, this made the doors having an inwards roll of about 18 – 20 degrees.
Then they started closing the foils on the upper part of the doors to change the roll angle, which came down to about 10 – 13 degrees.
With these setting the doors are very stabile during turnings. Even if one door comes up while turning, it does not loose its spreading power and goes down again very easily.
According to the skipper there was a noticeable difference from the doors they previously used on the trawler “Ingunn” and he highly recommends the Thyborøn “Flipper” trawldoors today.