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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JF Quinnelly who wrote (10923)	6/6/1998 2:15:00 AM
From: James F. Hopkins	Respond to of 71178

JF; I caught that PBS show, and watched it with great interest. Not until I read the book was I even aware we had such a storm, I was well south of it and just about in the middle of the Atlantic when it all happened. I didn't have much in the way of getting news just a few stoic type weather reports by the C.G. that were even hard for me to pick up on the Radio we had, ( an old piece of junk ). I knew something was going on but couldn't figure out what, I've crossed many times and never ran run into much of any thing as far south as I was. Heck it had me slowed down to just about half speed and was causing me some concern from a fuel stand point. The old boat I was taking over didn't have a lot of fuel to spare for such a trip ( even with 2 1500 gal extra deck tanks, and another 30 drums in the ice hold ) we were eating up 500 gal a day and I only had about a weeks worth of bad weather figured in as a safety factor , slowing down stretches the fuel some but I was getting worried. Our weather was not what you could call real bad but it was mostly head on and causing me to angle south, and between the two it was eating up the fuel. We made it to Nigeria OK with about 20 drums still left in the ice hold, but I never felt easy enough to hook her up until we were off Liberia. Even after I got back to the States ( early January 92 ) there was no mention of that storm that I can remember getting my attention. Not until I picked up that book last year did I know what had happened. I should have got back well before Christmas that's how much it slowed us down. I couldn't figure why someone in Nigeria wanted to buy that old boat , but it came to me about half way across but I don't think it would be a good idea to post it. I never long lined, but was always running into a bunch that did and from what I saw of them, that got to be about the hardest of the ways to make it as a fisherman, and they had the scars to prove it too. Jim P.S. Offshore commercial fishing reportedly has a fatality rate per capita, 9 times higher than any other occupation going.