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It all started on Wednesday morning when I realized that I had 24 hours left to run around and get it all together. I had called all loose ends to tell them I would be gone for a few weeks and there would be no way for them to contact me.
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My close friend, Jim Otis, had decided to come along for the experience...so we hooked up and went over our war plan. Jim kept telling me not to worry, that it would all come together...but I was not convinced. (As you can already see there is a difference in our personalities.)
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On the way to the airport we hit traffic (of course!) and the usual commotion of checking in a ton of baggage and praying it would get there in one piece...especially the rods. I must have smoked about a thousand cigarettes before getting on that long flight...and as the plane took off Jimmy turned to me and said, "what have I gotten myself into?"...I told him, "it's too late, you're going!"
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The flight on America West was like a Greyhound bus with wings...all we were missing were chickens and goats running down the aisle, like in the old country. I laughed and ate my peanuts and something they called lunch...which I wouldn't even use for a chum slick. We landed and the first thing that I did was grab a cigarette and looked for an espresso coffee shop...Yes Mama, I had my fix.
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We collected our baggage and stuffed it all into a cab...I mean stuffed the cab! He shot us down to the Fisherman's Landing and we unloaded all of our stuff at the Travel Lodge which is 100 yards from the boat. I not only highly recommend staying there, it is the only place that I would stay...do not stay at the Dolphin or the Ramada Inn, if you get my drift. So I walked down to the Excel and was stoked. We found the room that we would be staying in and I took the bottom bunk because I fish around the clock and did not want to wake Jim up everyday.
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We slept like logs that night, still on New York time...and then at the crack of dawn we ran down to the boat with my provisions and met the crowd that we would be spending some time with. This was Dennis Braid's trip of "Braid" Products. An interesting crowd to say the least. It was a cold morning, especially for sunny San Diego and we were wearing our coats. Jim looked at me as if to say "I'm going to kill you...where 's the 80 degree weather...you promised shorts and suntan lotion." I told him that it would be coming.
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You have never seen so much equipment in your life. There was hundreds of thousand of dollars in equipment. Rods wrapped the boat all around. Every reel I knew and some new ones were lined up shining and polished. Tackle boxes stacked in order and off we went. As the boat left the phone calls disappeared. The commotion of the rat race was being left behind. The clocks were turned off and we were on our way.
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The tables became workshops as rigs were being made. It became a tackle shop with Bombers (lures) being prepared for wahoo. Some of the lures looked like Christmas ornaments and nice ones at that. Wired rigs in all different gages were readied for those razor sharp toothy critters. Reels were greased and cleaned and fine tuned. All done during the next 3 days on our way to the fishing grounds.
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The food came in as breakfast, then a snack, then lunch and hors d'oeuvre...and finally dinner. The cook was smoking! I haven't eaten this well in years. At night we saw some movies talked and got to know each other a little more. I knew most of the mates from the last trip...so we caught up on dock news and got the low down.
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