A few years back my nephew and a friend came to Florida to see the Daytona 500. They stayed with us the day after the race and had some time to kill since their flight back to Springfield Mo. wasn't until 7PM. I offered to take them offshore fishing. Being from the mid west neither one of them had ever been out of site of land on the ocean. We went out of Port Canaveral early that morning. About 18 miles out of the port my engine began sputtering and quit. I discovered the air vent for the fuel tank somehow got turned downward and the ocean spray had filled the gas tank with water. I tried to drain the carb floats but there was so much water coming through the fuel line it did no good.<br /><br />I got on the radio and called the coast guard and asked them to send seatow out. A good Samaritan broke in and said that would be a mistake and that he would gladly save me the tow bill and tow me himself. I gave him my gps coordinates and he headed in our direction, problem was he was too drunk to properly use the gps and couldn't find us. After about a half hour of trying to hook up over the radio the coast guard broke in and offered assistance. They asked for his compass heading and picked him up on radar then using my gps coordinates guided him to me.<br /><br />The captain (a Caucasian) and his mate (an African American) had been drinking all day and were two of the funniest guys I have ever met. We threw them a tow rope and the mate was having a hard time tying it off. The captain remarked to him, "Willie, I thought you were in the Navy?" The mate answered " I was a cook, cooks don't tie knots". We all cracked up. Anyway we got hooked up and under tow. My son who was 11 at the time asked if he could troll while we were under tow and I said no that I didn't want to **** off the captain of the other boat. My nephew then said he didn't see any harm in slipping a line over since we hadn't caught anything all day and we could do it without anybody seeing us.<br /><br />Not 5 minuets after putting the line in all hell broke loose. Who would have thought that while trolling under tow we would hook up with a sailfish. Anyway the good captain of the other boat thought it was funny that we were trolling under tow and didn't mind.<br /><br />By the way I now have a fuel and water separator on my boat.
