Saturday, 2am, met up with Frank from these message boards, Tom and Matt. We drove up to Avila.

Before I go on, I must tell you of the three fatal errors I can make if I want to get sick on the ocean.

1) be flu-ish, or just recovering from a cold.

2) Get NO sleep. Be very fatigued.

3) Eat nothing, but drink fluids, even better if they don't mix.

Well, guess what. I almost didn't go, because someone turned on my sinuses tap and left it open. (#1) You know, when your upper lip is raw, not to mention your nostrils, from sneezing and honking liquid snot from your honker....... I will spare you the details......

Got to bed at 11:30pm before a 1:00 am wake up. Ever since feeling the WRATH of Capt. Fred Benko of the Condor, when as a 2nd deckhand, 45 minutes late for a 2 day Island Hiking trip at 5:45 am, it is understandably difficult for me to get anything but a troubling slumber when I know I must be up in a few hours to catch a boat. (#2)

Being it was a last minute trip, that I don't have a garage or a suitable place to store my fishing gear(between places right now), and probably the fact that I am pretty damn un-organized, OK I admit it, admission is the first step to recovery, right? I still had my bounce-ball flashers on 2 of my tuna bait rods, so while the other three guys were in FatCats, which, (SHAMELESS PLUG) has the BESTESTEST fish and chips in the world, I was on the boat, in the dark, in the line at Avila, cutting spectra, and winding 40lb ande on to reels....... Of the breakfast I ordered, bacon, eggs, toast, hot chocolate and orange juice and a coke, I downed the hot cocoa, the coke and half an orange juice on the way out to the bait barge. I did manage to scarf down a piece of bacon, luke-warm with the lard starting to turn white-ish on it, down.

All these three factors would later come back to haunt me............

After getting a scoop of overpriced, bait that was so fresh out of the pond, it didn't know it had been wrapped in a net and put on board a bait boat. Hey, beggars can't be choosers, I know. We pounded our way out the 12 miles out to the weather bouy. It was about a 5-6 foot cross-chop, spine-fusing, body-slamming chop, with a mad captain doing 18 knots in a hard running boat. No complaints, capt. Run run run, we did. Whoa, what is that grumbling in my stomach. Having only lost my cookies, techni-colored yawned, chummed, you know what I mean, 2 times on a boat, I did know what was to come. Both prevoius times, I chucked, and got back to fishing, feeling much better, save for the bulemic-teenage-highschool-girl breath. Well this was to be the "Perfect Stomach-Storm" Three individual factors, each, in their own right, not enough to merit anything but mild discomfort, but combining to create an evil synergy, building on eachothers strenght to wreak havoc.

BLAM, BLAM, BLAM........ the boat charges through the chop.......

The boat, no disrespect to Matt, who rebuilt it from a shell of a hull, has pretty much no where for the 3rd and 4th guy to hang on to, so while the Capt. has one hand on the wheel, and the other holding the throttle down, lest it might creep up while slamming down the face of a wave, and the person riding shotgun, knuckles white, gripping the windshield, wind in the face, eyes wide, have something to hold on to, and can see the incoming ramps that the boat will rise up and launch, the 3rd and 4th guy have an half inch wide inside-cubbyhole rail to try to hold on to, while trying not to come down on it too hard as to bruise the palm of your hand, and the underside of those back to back, ski-boat seats where the seat rises up as the boat falls down the wave, to hold on to, at the risk of crushing your fingers as it slams down on its box. WOW, how is that for a run-on sentance, Mrs. Wilson? (my 7th grade English teacher)

To be continued.............