Island Prep 2012

Compleat

Deck hand arrives Monday night... That means the "window" for the cross starts Wednesday... looks a little bumpy in the forecast that far out but as we all know the weather service is seldom right...

Compleat

Well today was another forever one... Busted out the big guns and gave my seacock and the cooling coils themselves an acid bath. That seems to have solved that problem with the AC. Showed the onan some love and then air locked the bizzatch up. Fun fun fun getting that right. Running all the systems til the storms started. Got most of em turned off but with a quick kablam! of a direct lightning hit it looks like we have cooked our stereo...
Polished the cabin deck, found two leaks, swabbed the bilge.... Looked at my watch and I think I have had enough for today...

Compleat

Man the storms went deep into the night. Marina looked like one of those morning after scenes from deadliest catch. Coconuts, fronds, leaves, debris, stretched dock lines, scuffed up pilings... No real damage just a mess... Finally finished the last of the er chores and straightened up down below... Arm killing me and will take rest of day off...

snookyj

Big storms rolled thru late last night...i knew they were on there way over to you Paul. The weather should start getting around tuesday...hopefully!!!

Compleat

Welll it must really be nearing go time... Nerves all wound up. I know we are all good to go... Probably the best prepared we have ever been... No matter how many times i do this tho its the same thing... Gonna be a basket case til the lines are tight and the engines are off on that side. Bread and last minute perihables go on probably tomorrow even tho leave window doesn't look the best til Thursday. I wish they would go the other way with wind predictions. Nudging up like 1 mile per hour each update... If it was a regular boat ride I'd be good to go in most anything. With freezer, outboard and load of other stuff out in the pit and a wet boat each few inches makes me tense up that much more... Again no reason. Just part of how I am...

Compleat

One of the draw backs to being too ready with stuff all around the boat is the dirt that gathers around it when its windy. Gotta unsecure each piece wash then tie back down. If I don't wash now I spend a fortune on water that side...

Compleat

So the long hours of dialog with deck hand begin. We map out plans for all kinds of back up plans and dial in the ones we know best... Nine years as a team we are finally getting on the same page. I no longer am playing the part of school teacher or at least as much. Unspoken commands are received and acted on where it used to be verbal and often repeated loudly.
Eyes squint and muscles tighten. Should be like riding a bike but never is... Except for a hand full of local trips this boat has sat for the better part of a year. No matter how hard you work and how deep you dig to find things that aren't right some of them don't show up til a few hard hours are astern of us. Until the gen set is off and the breaker flipped the butterflies work on my very soul. Then the tension will relieve as the pain of doing customs dance becomes the next thing on the to do list...

snookyj

Compleat wrote: »

One of the draw backs to being too ready with stuff all around the boat is the dirt that gathers around it when its windy. Gotta unsecure each piece wash then tie back down. If I don't wash now I spend a fortune on water that side...

Man i hate that...bothers me beyond belief!!!

Compleat

Run engines, run genset, run electronics, all working the way they should. Still got butterflies and will til I get tied up. No way around it... Call it compulsive or whatever more colorful term you'ld like. I do feel better though after i have done the first throttle up and down in the ditch... I really don't get unwound til that side tho.
Deck hand is a little slow to listen. We are going short term. He's only there for when the boss is and still he shows up with a quarter ton of dive gear and wet suits and stuff... Uggg... As long as i don't have to see it or deal with it he will be ok...

Compleat

This is what its all about...

Compleat

Much sexier here than at our hole in Palm Beach...
The butterflies and frayed nerves will go away once she gets like this...

Compleat

The boss man wont get happy til this happens again...

Compleat

Popped in 430 gallons to get the right balance... Weather looks good ... All stuff lashed down... Plan on like 8:30 go time in the morn...

Night Moves

Have a safe trip over! Looking forward to the fishing reports. This boat maintenance stuff is getting old! :grin

dragon bait

have a safe crossing paul
i`m leaving friday morning headed to san sal

bmoody

Compleat wrote: »

The boss man wont get happy til this happens again...

Tell more -- looks like you're fighting dead boat and nearly straight up and down. I'm thinking I might learn something, since I'd not figure those conditions with that boat.

Compleat

This was rather fun... Guy Harvey tourney first day. Half hour til lines out a sloppy 500-600 class blue made one of the wildest visual bites of all times. Zig zagging flashing colors and heated up. In that tourney we can't help at all and the boss man struggled just getting the rod from gunwale to chair... She ran a couple hundred yards up top and then hit the basement... I backed up to more or less vertical (which is when this pic was taken). From there I let the boat slowly slip away forward in order to slowly change angle and then back up to take that slack... Usually if I do that a few times the fight gets shorter. On this fish the boss had worn himself out getting settled down and had to drop to low gear then start pumping cause the fish just wouldn't plane upward. During a rest period, don't ask me why, the boss "plucked" the line like a guitar string. That telegraphed down to the fish and it hit the after burners adding about five hundred yards of line between us. Got back to a 150-200 yard stalemate and the hook pulled at about the hour and a half mark. We got the one before and the one later but that one we didn't get. The boss wants her back to try it again...
Night moves... Trust me the maintainence stuff was wearing me out too.
Ray safe travels and i hope you crush em!

Yellowfin39

Safe Trip. Flew over Bimini & Pocket this am. Looked good not many boats

Compleat

12hrs from now I'll be mid stream... I like to see other boats on that piece... The stream can be a real lonely place...

FS Blair

Good luck to you and the crew, looking forward to your catches too

Compleat

New thread begins tomorrow Blair... We got this one to 15,000 lets see if we can improve on that with the help of a lot of fish and scantily clad women pics...

Compleat

Glad we did all the prep... needed a lot of those things we didn't really plan on using today..