"Good morning to everyone," posted Bruce Smith writing about his new charter boat Fortune. "Yesterday it felt like we turned the corner, in a manner of speaking. The Coast Guard arrived promptly at 09:00 we proceeded to run through our annual top side inspection. We went through every compartment, looked at the wiring and paperwork. I'm not going to sit here and tell you we passed with flying colors, but what was written down on the work list/835 consisted mostly of getting our paper work completed before the first trip is to run the 27th of this month. It was great news in reality, nothing major was found, no soft deck, no new piping, the Fortune is in good health and we are looking forward to the upcoming season.

In other news concerning future trips. I had a meeting with the upper crust at the landing and it was stated that for the next 1.5 day trips passports are not needed, but if you have one go ahead and bring it. Fishing permits are 12 dollars a day, and the Visa's right now stand at 30 to 35 dollars. If this changes I will put the information out, pronto! One more word about passports, if you plan on fishing in Mexico, at all (from 3/4 to long range) in the future get a passport!

The crew has been working hard everyday pulling carpet off the walls, prepping for the new carpet, cleaning up some wiring harnesses. A couple of days ago we took the Fortune out into the bay for a test drive. We eventually topped out at 14.2 knots, but of course we were also burning 12 gallons an hour on each main, ouch. She can get up and move though, and this is still with the old props on. Once I back it off to a feasible 10.2 knots we were only burning 4.8 gallons on each main, that's more like it.