Logic Masters Deutschland e.V.

This puzzle the third in a series, and continues its story. If you want to follow the story, I recommend playing these puzzles first.

Fog and Phantoms: Prologue
Fog and Phantoms: High Seas, Low Spirits

The story continues below:
You watch silently, arms crossed, as your father moves quickly from room to room gathering the essentials he will need for his voyage. And then the flurry is over and he's kissing your cheek before following the tall stranger out the door. You bar the door and count to ten before racing up the stairs, snatching a small spyglass from the top of your dresser and craning your head out the window. At first, your trembling hands jumble the image, but you take a breath, and steady your arm against the sill. Before long you've tracked them down to the pier, across the tangle of docks and boardwalks to the gangplank of an unfamiliar schooner. When you're sure you've memorized the insignia it's flying, you swing yourself out the window and drop lightly down onto the awning below you. Soon you're padding through familiar alleys and then climbing the ladder down to clamber into the little rowboat you use to traverse the bay most mornings. You untie it from its moorings and grab the oars. If your father's going out to sea for the first time in a decade, you're going with him.

Rules:

Sudoku: Place the digits 1-9 once each in every row, column, and 3x3 box.

Phantoms: Some clues are phantoms and may only reveal themselves as the grid is shaded, for this reason, you may only shade the grid once allowed to by the other rules. Some phantoms interact with the fog borders unintentionally. If you see them very faintly on the edges of an unshaded unfoggy cell, they aren't part of the intended solve path until that cell is shaded.

Fog: Some of the grid is covered in fog. Placing the correct digit in a cell will clear the fog from that cell and its neighbors.

Docks and Water: Shade the grid with two colors, one representing the harbor's docks and the other representing its waters. Each orthogonally connected group of water cells must be connected to the bay at the right edge of the grid (i.e. it must have at least one cell in column 9), and each orthogonally connected group of dock cells must reach the shore at the left edge of the grid (i.e. it must have at least one cell in column 1). Columns 1 and 9 may contain cells of either type, so long as they obey the above rules. No 2x2 in the grid is entirely dock.

Cleat:

An X that separates two cells represents a cleat. It will always divide a dock cell from a water cell, and the digits in those cells will sum to 10.

Fishermen:

Circles in the grid represent fishermen. They always stand on dock cells. They may have a fishing line connecting them to other cells. Cells along the fishing line will sum to the number in the fisherman cell, and the hook end of the line will always land in the water.

Additionally, the digit in a fisherman cell counts the minimum number of branching cells of the dock the fisherman must walk through in order to return to the shore in column 1. A dock cell is considered to be branching if 3 or more of its orthogonal neighbors are also dock cells. If a fisherman is standing on a branching cell, it is included in his count.

Sharks:

If a cell contains a shark fin, it must be a water cell, and it will count the minimum number of straight-line moves that shark will need to make in order to make it to the bay in column 9. For example if a shark had to swim south 3 cells, west 2 cells, south another 1 cell, and then east 5 cells to reach open waters, the shark cell would contain a 4 (S+W+S+E). Sharks must swim through water cells, and cannot swim diagonally.

Note: Phantoms are tricksy, and will cause some clues to temporarily disappear when the pen tool is open. Don't worry, the clues will return when the tool is closed, and any markings you have done in the meantime will remain.

In the example grid below, the fisherman on r5c3 must be a 3 because he must pass through the 3 dock branches marked with green X's to get to shore. The shark in r4c2 must also be a three because its most efficient path to the bay consists of three straight lines, which are drawn here in blue.

Click here to play, or click here for a version without the cosmetic borders. I definitely went overboard on the aesthetics for this one, so if you find they're interfering with your solving experience, give the second link a go; you won't miss out on any story. Either way, I generally find that shading with darker colors shows clues more clearly.

This puzzle wouldn't have been possible without a great deal of help. I want to thank Calvinball, SennyK, and aqjhs for their invaluable help with testing. I'd also like to thank so many of you for encouraging me to continue the series after playing the first puzzles. Thanks folks!