It is a hot muggy August afternoon and you are sitting about 10-miles offshore in your center console at your favorite not so secret King Mackerel Hole when you hear a rumble of thunder off in the distance. You look west and skies are pitch black between you and the land as a nasty afternoon thunderstorm is rapidly forming. Your VHF radio has suddenly become the most important piece of equipment on your boat. You quickly turn off your IPOD and tune your VHF radio to the NOAA weather channel. The report states that there is a band of thunderstorms moving through the coastal area with strong winds, heavy rains, and the area is under a tornado watch.
Your fun fishing day has quickly turned into an afternoon full of serious decisions: do you wait the storm out, do you run for the hill, do you try to find an opening and hope to make it around, or do you head further offshore to try to get away from it. You know these decisions could literally be life or death if this is a bad storm.
If your boat is equipped by now you should have the radar on and should be tracking the storm yourself. Several times I have been able to find a break and skirt the edge making it home with only a few rain drops. A few other times I have not been as quite as lucky, but was able to find a spot in the storm that was not too terribly wide and was able to run through in a relatively short distance. But what if you do not have radar or what if you are unable to find a break? The sitting duck scenario has never appealed to me, unless of course the fishing action is unbelievable and the storm looks like it may peter out before I am affected! Several folks tried running further out to sea earlier this year to avoid a storm, that did not turn out to be a good decision, as they ran out of fuel and found themselves in even heavier seas than they expected.
When running straight into a storm is the only option; you had best be prepared for the worst. Preparing for the worst means just that preparing; and not waiting till you get in the middl