Our day started at about 4:15 a.m. with storms stretching from just south of Oregon Inlet, N.C. to Hatteras, N.C. A friend was warming up the motors on his boat while he and his mate were deciding what to do based upon the weather. After about an hour’s wait, we got underway. It was a beautiful ride out, and the weather improved as we headed to the east-southeast. Other than some bottom fishing trips to the Gulf Stream, it had been about thirty years since my last trip. As much as I love being at sea, I still had to take a Smart Sense to prevent a bout of motion sickness from coming on.
I will give you a fishing report that might seem a bit embellished, but this is the way that it was. The report can be summed up with one word: – spectacular! We began trolling on the green water side of the Gulf Stream, about 30 to 35 miles offshore. As we crossed into the blue water, it was on. Our first knockdown caused the captain to lose one of his teaser rigs and the fish grabbed the Ballyhoo lure, right behind the hook. The next four hook-ups would be white marlin, with us getting one to the boat, equating to a catch and release.
Seas in the Gulf Stream were running three- to four-feet and one of our guys would deal with seasickness all day. I can safely say that I knew, from past experience, exactly what he was going through. There was a point that we witnessed hundreds of acres of porpoises feeding on bait fish. I have never witnessed anything like it before. We would have three quad knockdowns, in laymen terms, four rods hooking up at the same time on three occasions. We would land a blackfin and a yellowfin tuna. The captain even got in on the action, hooking what we believe was a large yellowfin. After a good fight, the fish won. One thing that was happening under the surface was that sharks were breaking off many of the hook-ups. Our proof was in GoPro footage that my son shot.
At about 1:30, with all of the Ballyhoos gone, we began to head back. I went up and sat with my captain friend and another pastor friend, while everyone else fell asleep down below. The mate had come up and we had gone under the Oregon Inlet Bridge when my son came up and said that he smelled something burning. The mate went down to investigate and we did get a whiff of something. It seemed like an eternity, but the next thing that we heard was, “the boat is on fire!” At that moment, black smoke rolled from the exhaust and I got below to find more black smoke in the cabin from the bilge to the ceiling. The one that had been sick had gotten a fire extinguisher and knocked the fire down, a fire that had smoldered for hours. We were only about a mile from the marina when we realized that we had a problem. After three fire extinguishers had been dumped, I began to heave five-gallon buckets of ocean water over the stern. An electrical fire ended up igniting the flooring above the port engine, and it showed itself when it burned through the floor. The captain was able to get the boat safely docked with the starboard engine, while we continued to deal with a stubborn area of smoldering. Eventually, we would call the fire department that would come with a chainsaw to cut a portion of the floor out and we were able to put everything out. The point of this story was that it could have had a catastrophic end, but I know that the Lord protected us. Another point that I end with is that things instantly went from good to bad.
