Testament to murphy's law

Well, last Saturday my illustrious captain and I left for what was to be the first of my serious training excercises. It was a beautiful day and left no indication as to the fiasco that was about to ensue.
The capt. said we didn't need fuel; he topped off the tanks when we came back in the last time. I should probably as a preface say that this boat is not a foul weather boat. She has low freeboard (distance from the water to the rail) and a wet exhaust (the exhaust pipe is at water level). This is a particularly fast boat as far as offshore commercial grouper boats go; she'll do 20mph+ and cruises comfortably at 18, burning a minimal amount of fuel as 18mph only requires 2000 rpm's. So with this cauldron of energy between us and the water we made it to the bait hole in a remarkable 2 and a half hours. That's normally a 6 hour ride or so. We fished for bait 'till dark and went hunting for grouper. The first wreck we hit was a decent rally of nice sized grouper. We had 10 on deck for me to process on the way to the next bottom feature. On the next stop we caught nothing. On the next stop we caught nothing. (I would continue like this, but y'all probably get the idea) Finally about 10 pm the captain cooked supper and we quit fishing. The next morning was a series of stops similar to the night before. Skipper decided we should head in shore and fish shallow (30 fathoms) , as the other boats in the fleet had already pounded what we were trying to fish. We did go in and began to catch white snapper, scamp, trigger fish and beeliners. Not real high dollar fish, but quantity will pay, too. Now the fun starts.
Wednesday morning we woke up and the bilge was full of water. Guess who had to climb down into the bilge and replace the bilge pump while wading in two feet of oily, diesel fuely fish gutty water? I'll give you two guesses (and it wasn't the captain). NICE. So I got the bilge pumped out (don't worry all you greenpeace people; The oil and fuel float on top of water and the float switch shuts down before the oil gets to the pump) and we're running along to the first hole of the day. The motor quit. Just like that. The captain said "Wow, usually they'll sputter first!" I was thrilled. Turned out not to be such a bad thing after all; the water level in the racor filter (filters water out of the fuel) was up and when the filter gets clogged the motor stops. we had two extra filters on board, so we replaced it and started running again. At this point I'm kind of relieved; there's always a couple of things that go wrong on a boat and I was glad to get them out of the way. I was just thinking this when the temperature alarm started shrieking. Sigh. I figured it was something plugging the raw water intake under the boat and all you have to do is turn off the valve, remove the hose, open the valve and poke a stick or something through to dislodge whatever is clogging the hole. Not the case. The hole wasn't clogged. The only other cause for the overheating would be a bad impeller. That was the case. So we pulled the cover, pulled the impeller and it looked fine. Not a problem; this means the key that holds the impeller to the shaft has sheared. We looked and looked, but there wasn't a key on that boat. We tried to make one out of several different materials, but none would hold. On to plan L. I was guessing we were dead in the water, but the captain had other ideas. As I was preparing lunch he bypassed the raw water impeller entirely, put a 2800 gallon per hour lift pump in line on the hose and jammed it straight into the motor. It actually worked. I was elated. I figured since we were limping along with an improvised and compromised cooling system that the capt. would just count our losses and head back to the dock. Not the case. He wanted to keep fishing. So we did. More small trash fish that bring about $1.50/ lb. Those small buggers really tear up your hands. Ouch. We hit probably 5 or six wrecks and made a fairly decent haul before the racor filter got too full again. Not good. Usually It takes 3 or 4 days before it fills up that full. It's just habit to bleed off the water at the bottom of the filter once a day. 'Tis not good at all. I install our LAST racor filter, prime it up and we go. 10 minutes later it happened again. We're out of racor filters and I think we're really dead in the water this time. Close to 50 miles out. That's not far by commercial fishing standards, but too far for me to swim. We sit and read, eat, I have a couple of beers and then the captain tries it again. The motor started for just a second, where it wouldn't do that a while ago. This gave me my one good idea of the trip. On the premise that the fuel tanks are full of water (which they are) I suggest that we pump all of the fuel from the starboard tank over into the port tank. We dry and blow out the fouled racor filter the best we can and leave it to dry overnight wrapped in newspaper, and we'll let the tank settle out overnight. I guess I didn't mention the fact that we were in five and six foot seas for the past four days and that's why the water got in the tanks. Part of the reason it's not a foul weather boat. Thursday morning we wake up and the motor started. The capt. wanted to keep fishing!!! I said "You must WANT me to try and mutiny!" I told the captain that I was going home. When he asked how I was going to do that, I informed him that he was taking me. He got the idea. That was a good thing, as we rode all the way north to the cut between St. George Island and Little St. George, and died right in the middle of the channel. None of our fleet was coming in 'till friday, so we were resigned to drop anchor in the middle of Sike's cut. Not a particularly good place to camp out, but we were within sight of people, buildings, land and trees. Besides, If we were blocking the main entrance to Apalachicola bay, no one could slip by us and say they didn't see us. (dang, that captain's smart!) So, we spent the night camped out in the middle of the cut (I don't think very many people have done that lately) and woke up refreshed and out of beer. Next morning, the first boat we saw were good friends that towed us back to the dock. We unloaded our fish, pumped the fouled fuel out, refilled the tanks with fresh and now here I am, telling all you young men to GO TO COLLEGE!!!