We Went to the Keys Last Friday Night

Happy Friday Eve!!! Ugh I am so happy it is almost the weekend!

My weeks are flying by at work but that doesn't mean the stress isn't there.

Last Friday, The Husband, my dad, Marc, Drew, and I all took the day off of work to go off-shore fishing. We generally charter a boat for 6 and use the same captain over and over.  He has always helped us catch quality fish and we ALWAYS have an awesome time.

So we made the 2 hour trek to his boat - this means we got up at 4:30 so we had time to load up, drive there, and load the boat by 7. yes we were up REALLY early but hey - that's all part of the game! We get there and it is looking like it is going to be ROUGH off-shore. I mean we are bouncing pretty good inside the inlet! sheesh! good thing I bought Wal-Dram II the night before...

SIDE NOTE: The Husband kept encouraging me to buy those Sea-bands. After checking them out and their $13 price tag, I decided to talk to the pharmacist. The thing was, these things seem like a mind over matter deal. I'm not buying this whole idea that the pressure of the bands will work - I might as well wear hair ties on my wrists! So I talk to the pharmacist and she recommends this Wal-Dram II (less drowsy). "It is what we recommend to the older people when they cruise because they are a fall hazard" yea - she said that...as in fall of the boat hazard! CRAZY! I confess I laughed a little bit when she told me this...it sounded absurd...

Back to the story - I took the wal-dram on the way so it had time to get in my system.  The men on the boat encouraged me to drink a beer on the way out of the inlet to help with the sloshing of the boat. OK I'm in - we all enjoyed an ice cold beer at 8 am. NICE!

About a mile off shore, we hit a pretty good sized wave. suddenly we are heading back IN shore. What's going on you ask?! The boat CRACKED. Seriously - CRACKED! Unbelievable! AND Frustrating because we were all SO excited! So we all have another beer.

Now this girl is a LIGHT WEIGHT when it comes to drinking so I was feeling PRET-TY good by the time we got back to the dock. We unloaded- all five of us pouting like a bunch of school children and begrudgingly headed back to the interstate. By the time we hit the highway, we had made the decision that we were going to still try to go fishing. we pulled over on the side of the road and started making calls. No one was going and all those who were HAD. BUMMER!!

Then The Husband has a bright idea 'let's go to The Keys! it's only a 4.5 hour drive from here and they are ALWAYS fishing there'.  Now I'm three beers in and from the backseat shout 'hooray! let's go! great idea!' Off we went...

4.5 hours, a stop for lunch, and two wrong turns later we arrived in The Keys! This girl was EXHAUSTED so while the boys got out and looked for a place to charter, I stayed in the truck and slept for 40 minutes. Best decision I made that day haha!

We got on the boat at 4 that afternoon and headed out on the water with a captain and first mate we hadn't gone with but kept getting positive recommendations for.  We told them we all wanted to catch Amber Jacks and some sort of snapper. Amber Jacks are incredibly strong and pretty big fish! and I caught the biggest =) 

     

OH and the cherry on top  (except not so much) we forgot the memory card for our camera SO all of our pictures are courtesy of camera phones. AWESOME! Regardless it was SO MUCH fun! The drive home at 10 at night wasn't so awesome but we made record time =) and arrived at our house at 2pm...you do the math ;)  I'm so glad I was able to make this super fun memory with my dad, The Husband, and two awesome friends =) 

Have you ever done anything crazy spontaneous?