Scott, Thanks for your response--your kelp cutters will help you a lot! Running where there are likely to be lines in the water is always something of a gamble. The question I sometimes face is: which is worse, the potential roll from turning off the stabilizers or the likelihood of catching a line and having to deal with it. In the protected waters of Maine, where most of the lobster pots are not far from shore and the seas are typically small, I usually elect to center the fins. Even then, however, I usually catch a few each summer. Curiously, we have never hooked up on a longline. We've seen plenty of them, normally without the pangas because longliners along the Atlantic seaboard and in the Caribbean are typically 60+ foot boats that set a longline, leave it to soak for a spell, then come back to haul it in hours or maybe even days later. Usually both ends and several points in between are marked with radar reflectors, which make them easy to avoid. Lobster pots in Maine are almost impossible to avoid and I think you'll find 'em much worse than the Pacific NW. One of the worst locations I remember is going into Tenants Harbor on the western edge of Penobscot Bay. Heading in late in the afternoon, the sun is in your eyes and hundreds of lobstah pots are set right between the channel markers making it almost impossible to avoid hitting one or two. No fun! But Tenants is not the only place that happpens. When I asked an old Down East Maine friend who runs 600 pots why he and his lobsterman friends insisted in planting their pots right in the channel between the markers, he gave me a flinty-eyed look like I was either stupid or crazy, then told me: "Because THAY-AT is wheah the LOBSTAHS ahh!" Nuff said. Have a great time in Maine . . . lobster pots notwithstanding, you're in for some of the best cruising ever in the Pine Tree state. Cheers, --Milt