I remember labor day 1984, think it was '84, sword/tuna fishing 300 miles offshore pensacola,fla.,was calm and nice for 6-7 day's, no warnings on wx.,all of a sudden black horizon coming offshore from the mexican side, pulled our gear and headed north,64' thompson,maybe 28-30 knots,wind picking up, only 250 miles to shore,lol,i have a pic someplace(polaroid days) , of 4 perfectly shaped black tornadoes coming at us from the side, they never got to us, but hurricane winds did, we fought the growing storm for 100 miles, 25' swells in a following sea took forever, we got to the intracoastal at orange bch.,AL.,and tied her down, next morning the hurricane wiped out several towns,and a big chunk of pensacola, it did would make landfall then return to sea and hit land again several times, did millions in damage. We were lucky.we were at the point of tossing 1500 lb tuna overboard to lighten the load, but couldn't bring ourselves to toss are paychecks overboard. Got tons of old stories from my youth fishing in florida. There was no lesson to learn back then, loran c and paper charts and radar is all we had, weather reports were often wrong. Just the gut feeling saved our butts. I'll never forget the light breeze just going dead calm, then turn right around and be a cool stiff breeze that never stopped building.
_________________ Paramount 21 "Superfisherman" CC,Merc 225x,merc 15hp pro kicker.MG xi5,105lb
|