It is true!  Mako went overboard on May 15 thanks to all of the guys who really pitched in to get an awful lot of work done in a shiert period of time.  The crew at Sunny’s, James and the guys at Electronics Plus, Bobby and Wayne at Bluewater, Joe Moore and a lot of other people deserve a gigantic thank you.

Coming to the end of finishing a boat consists of trying to get a thousand details remembered and completed.  That is what we will be up to over the next week or two until we bring her over to Bermuda.  We are dying to go fishing!

Thanks to all the friends that have been calling to arrange their trips.  I can tell you that you will enjoy the new ride!

- Capt. Allen DeSilva

You recall that our boat in Bermuda (MAKO) is being built as we speak by Sunny Briggs and the team at Briggs Boat Works.  Well, she is about to splash in the next few days.  Now, I know we are biased, but check her out!

MAKO

Captain Allen is going to Carolina to oversee the frantic details from here until the end.  We are confident that MAKO will be ready to go by June 1.  More pics after his upcoming visit.

Well, Black and Blue Fishing club, MAKO and the De Mako are just about ready to go.
First, some news about the Club – we finally have the legal and banking stuff done.  It was a bother to set it all up so formally, but in these times of economic uncertainty, we think it will pay off to have dotted the “i’s”.  You are reading this so the new website works. Many thanks to Wade at rainmakerwebdesign.com for his help on the site. Like most things, a website is about 7.2 times harder and more time consuming than I would have guessed. The effort to recruit members is going well with three Founding Members already. The captains and members have emailed the proposal to many of their friends and contacts.  We are quietly confident that it will be a success given the interest we are seeing after a week or two.

De Mako – that is the boat that will end up in the Pacific – is sitting in West Palm Beach Florida.  She had some work done to get her ready for Panama (back up generator, watermaker, satellite phone and TV, etc).  We expect that she will be ready to go shortly.  I am attending a convention of sorts this weekend as Allen DeSilva (the Club’s Bermuda captain), Mike Springer (the Club’s Pacific captain) and I descend on South Florida to meet with Jason Doyle and make sure the boat is ready for the trip.

And what a trip it is.  Florida to the Canal is a long, long way.  While Mike has plenty of experience with trips that long, most of the rest of us are more used to the 750 mile run from Bermuda to North Carolina.  I always think of crossings as being like a policeman.  You are going to be bored or scared…and you really hope it works out that you are bored. We expect De Mako will be fishing in Panama by the end of April.  I know several members have expressed an interest in trying to get down there as quickly as they can.  We are looking forward to those first fishing reports!

MAKO, the boat the Club will run in Bermuda, is probably being sanded as we speak.  Let me explain.  MAKO is being built by Sunny Briggs in North Carolina.  The new MAKO is the third boat Sunny built for Allen and me.  If you have ever watched one of these boats constructed, you know that the process is 1/2 sanding, 1/2 everything else.  Sunny, Jeff and the guys are doing a great job pushing to have her done by May 1.  She is going to be pretty!  I can’t wait to see her overboard. We will add pictures of both of the boats when we get back from the upcoming trip.
– Jeff Radke