...and as luck would have it we were a tad south of where we wanted to be in an area where there are a half a million crab pots, each with their own float and rope push wanting to twist itself around a the propeller of any mean ol' boat that ran them over...

Now when ya' loose and engine that means you also loose half yer speed and the boat kinda wants to pull toward the lost engine side and we were heading into the upper bay where the seas were alot higher and wind purdy steady off the port side so our new reality (at least for that moment) was dodging crab pots while trying to hold a compass heading with wind and seas battering the port side of the boat!!! That meant that if we saw a crab pot at 1:00 that we had to swing to the port side an extra 50 or so feet in order to not let the seas and wind push us up into it... To make things worse we were headed directly into the sun and the reflections on the water made it a full time job fir both of us to find the sumabichin' crab pots... P.B. has a better knack for findin' 'um so I manned the wheel while he called out 2:00, 11:00, dead ahead fir what seemed an eternity before we had cleared the last of the evil things...

We were now in the open bay with seas and wind pushing the port side and I had to call the P-Vine and at least tell her that we were alive but the only place where it was quiet enuff was up in the bow so I carefully made it up there, called her and as I was telling here about our situation I was lookin' out the port and with all that was going on with the boat I'd be lookin' down at sea and 10 seconds later looking staright up at the sky... Now that's what I call fun...

There's one thing about a 47 foot boat chuggin' at 5 knots accross the bay that was probably in both our heads... No, actually more than one thing... But the one that came to my mind, other than prayin' not to loose a seconf engine, was that it looks like a wounded duck to any, ahhhhhhh, police boat... I mean, worse than a red Camaro doing 90 on the interstate???

But...