Well, It’s been a while since I’ve posted here, but this trip was just too good not to share. After setting a S.C record for keeping an offshore fishing boat for 18 years and five sets of engines, I sold the original A-fish-a-knot-o last month. That boat fit me when I was just out of college, but I have grown in size about 20% and needed a bigger vessel to handle my aging bones and muscles.
What great times I have had and memories I have shared with so many friends and family. Some of my closest friendships now are due to the time spent offshore sharing our passion and desire for the peace and freedom away from the chaos and stress here on land.
After many years of looking for my perfect boat(An express model affording the unobstructed 360 degree views and providing the ideal seating to maximize socializing and “team involvement”), outboard powered allowing me to run Dewees and save 45 min roundtrip from IOP marina, A/C cabin for napping and cooking, ice maker to end the burden of hauling 300 pounds of ice down to the boat(did I mention my aging bones and muscles?), a HUGE cockpit, etc.
After a few weeks of bottom painting, installing outriggers, servicing the engines(Kudos goes out to Paul and his team at Ross marine who absolutely could not have done a more stellar of a job- 5 stars and first class with “on the ball” performance!, and Kudos to the incredible staff at Hanckel Marine who have always come though for me in a pinch with over the top service), we got her rigged up just in time to fish the weather window yesterday. Not having time to mark Dewees, and wanting to have plenty of light and high tide, my eager buddies, Hamp, Stephen, Russ, Nate and I pushed away from the marina around 7am.
The night before I had looked at the sea surface temps and had seen the closet point to the warm edge looked to be a 155 degree heading, so after clearing Dewees, I scrolled my curser to a waypoint offshore I had marked on a previous trip at 155 degrees and set the autopilot. We cruised around 32
Seen the post on THT and it looks like you guy shad a hell of a trip. Boat looks awesome from the pics seen so far. Somebody on your boat said you guys were near the SWB then South? Either way hell of a way to break in the new boat. Broke mine in last year with a nice sail 15 mins in.
We started around 350 feet on the 400 line. cruise at 4300 rpm is 33-34 kts and 68 gph. cruise at 37 kts is 78 gph. She weighs 28,000 pounds fully loaded. We troll two engines to save hours on motors and burn 5 gph at 6 knots plus or minus current
