Part Duex

The boating weather has been less than stellar.  Between the weather and finding a protected location to try to find these elusive (to us) lobsters has proven to be challenging.  We see all of these smaller boats coming in with LOADS of lobster and we are being confined by water depth, vulnerability in the windy/wavy ocean, and most importantly lack of local knowledge. 

Our boating troubles have continued - we lost our water pump, which thankfully Russell has had happen a couple of times and was able to fix after 4-5 hours of hard work after buying a new one at West Marine.  We hit the dock with the back of the boat when we were returning from getting fuel (495 gallons) and put a nice large hole in the fiberglass.  Yes, my fault for faulty instructions.  Russell says with a laugh, this happens to everyone for the 1st couple of trips.  I'm not quite sure.

During a couple of these "lobster quests" we took on some very tough seas.  We didn't realize that the weight of the dive equipment and the lack of weight from fuel and water was making the boat list to the starboard, which made for a couple of scary moments on the boat.  The downstairs was referred to as the war zone, as EVERYTHING both in and now out of the cabinets went flying.  We thankfully made some weight adjustments on the next trip which helped significantly.

Which all leads to yesterday, Dan and Russell (after the scary trip) plotted a trip to a random place to "try" to find lobster.  Got there successfully (safely) in 4-5 ft seas (these are huge) and found an extremely calm location to keep the boat.  We launched the dinghy and found a random 100 ft wreck to dive, just by chance.  As Dan and Russell were diving, I saw 2 dive boats pull up about 50 yards away.  The boys surfaced, grabbed the lobster gear, and FINALLY found the lobster.  They brought up 10 less than legal lobsters which we cooked up on the grill a couple hours later.  They were AWESOME.  I don't know if you have ever had $500 a piece baby lobster (fuel, boat repairs, lodging, etc), but they never tasted better.  We called them the veal of the ocean.  Dan apologized to each of them as he ripped their head off.  As you know, Dan is not the fish killer, but the investment of time and money made him a true hunter.

We are off today to take the boat to the same location again to stay a night or 2, as our planned trip to the Dry Tortugas for a couple of nights isn't going to happen because of the wind/ocean conditions.  Wish us mechanical and lobster luck.