ABC News: Breakfast in London, Lunch in New York, Baggage in Rio

Nov. 9, 2005 — Bagless in Baltimore — it's perhaps the most upsetting of all semi-routine airline experiences (with the exception of missing your flight altogether). You've jumped through all the hoops, satisfied Homeland Security that you're not a threat — even endured being served peanuts-du-jour in place of real food and being sardined into the Screaming Infant Section for five hours.

But just when you think the marathon is about to end with a comfy bed in a nearby hotel (where you can ready yourself for the big meeting tomorrow), you suddenly realize there's no one left worshiping at the rotating baggage altar but you, and your bags are nowhere to be found.

So what does the seasoned traveler do now? Jeans, a pullover, and sneakers are hardly going to cut it in the morning, not to mention the basic need for a few personal grooming aids that have suddenly gone missing.

The first step, of course, is to find the small torture chamber known as the "airline baggage services" office. It's torture, by the way, for both you and the airline personnel within, since few customers enter in a delighted mood. But when your bags are AWOL, you really have no practical choice but to go see the baggage folks immediately and file a formal report.

Whether your luggage is truly lost in a maze of connecting airlines or is merely "delayed" and coming home one flight behind you, the people behind that counter are your only path to salvation.

In other words, even though you'd really like to pound someone, do NOT take it out on them! Be nice, and in most cases they really will try their best to help you. (Yes, there are some airline personnel at baggage service counters who consider customers to be an interference with their day, but they're the exception.)
Be Patient With the System

The process of locating a so-called "lost or delayed" bag is a rather boilerplate procedure in most established, major carriers, and it starts with the possibility that even though the carousel is empty, your duds may at that very moment be sitting in the baggage services office waiting for you to come snarling through the door. Sometimes they're in a large pile of "early" bags the airline has, for reasons no mortal yet understands, flown in via a more direct routing.

And sometimes there's already a message waiting for you that your bags are in the loving arms of the airline and en route on a later flight. In such cases, the airline's obligation will be to have your bags delivered to wherever you are through a privately contracted baggage company, and (maybe) provide you with either a kit of overnight necessities, or compensation for having to make an emergency run to Walgreens — the latter being negotiable.

If the bags aren't already there or en route, the agent you deal with will inevitably explain that at the end of the flying day all the airlines have their baggage personnel take an inventory of bags left at their station, and that inventory is loaded in their computer system to be matched up (hopefully overnight) with the reports of bags missing.

This sounds very pro forma and simple, but even though very few bags are ever permanently lost, waiting for the "system" to work in matching bags with upset bagless passengers can consume days or even weeks, leaving you to make up for the missing items in those suitcases. This is especially true where there are multiple airlines involved in your trip, and even more so when you've been flying internationally.
Where Did They Go?

Understanding why bags get lost to begin with may help a bit. First, when big weather systems — such as hurricanes, heavy thunderstorms or blizzards — jumble flight schedules and cancel flights, bags and people get disconnected. That we can all understand.

Similarly, when your flight arrives late at a mega-hub airport such as Chicago and you barely skid into the connecting flight's departure gate in time to make it, the chances that your bags were treated to a similar level of determination is far less certain. A large number of so-called "misconnected" bags are left behind for just that reason — a late arrival and not enough time to make the transfer to the connecting flight.

Sometimes the problem is you and the fact that you arrived at the airport too close to flight time. In most cases of late check-in, the airline will make a note on your tag and in the computer of your tardiness, which means that if the bags don't arrive with you at your destination, the airline isn't necessarily responsible for having them delivered.

But, too often, bags just end up in the wrong bin or otherwise placed on the wrong aircraft. Equally frequent are the instances in which bags "override" a station — in other words, the baggage handlers failed to pull the bags out of the aircraft before it flew on to Mexico, leaving you suitless in San Diego while your bags enjoy Cabo San Lucas, presumably having more fun than you are.

Occasionally, bags are pulled off your airplane at too early a stop, and every now and then one is stolen from the carousel before you can find it. What's largely gone from the panoply of problems, however, is the unreadable baggage tag sending luggage to far-flung locations because the handlers couldn't decipher someone's handwriting.

But WHY do we put up with lost and delayed bags at all in 2005? Don't these carriers own computers? Don't they employ competent people? If FedEx can tell you what truck your box is on and which intersection it's passing through (ok, a bit of an exaggeration), why can't Monster Airlines Inc. use those ubiquitous little bar code tags to do the same thing?

Money. Plain and simple. While there have been great advances in tagging your luggage, there are tens of millions yet to be spent on the equipment necessary to track those tags and your bags as efficiently as cargo carriers track their shipments. And if you hadn't noticed, an industry that has now lost every penny it ever earned since 1928 plus more than $20 billion is not exactly looking for opportunities to add to its investment in baggage equipment anytime soon.

So, the truth is that while the entire industry is getting better and better at delivering your things as promised, bad things still happen to good bags, and your best defense is to adhere to Murphy's Law: If it can go wrong, it will. In other words, plan every time to arrive without your bags by keeping vital medicines with you, and by taking enough essentials in your carry-on items to get by if your Samsonite ends up in Singapore — while you're in Savannah.

FISH OF THE WEEK

Monday, November 07, 2005
It took 21/2 hours for Mike Cranford (left) of Canby to land a 230-pound yellowfin tuna during a September trip to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Cranford fished with his stepfather, Chuck Stein (right) of Woodburn, Steve Suza of Oregon City and Lee Gamble of West Linn. Cranford, a state corrections officer, said the tuna was far stronger than large halibut he has caught in Alaska and that it twice nearly emptied the spool of line on his reel. He said his three companions offered to help fight the fish, but Cranford stuck it out to the end. They split the tuna and several dorado when they returned to Oregon.

Have a big fish, unusual photo, catchy fishing or hunting gimmick or good book to pass along? Send photos and ideas our way: Bill Monroe, 503-221-8231; e-mail billmonroe@news.oregonian.com; or Bill Monroe, The Oregonian, 1320 S.W. Broadway, Portland, OR 97201.

Escape to Baja

Hang like a celebrity in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico
by Grace Bastidas
November 7th, 2005 4:47 PM

What do Jennifer Aniston, Gwyneth Paltrow, and John Wayne have in common? (John Wayne never dated Brad Pitt, so that's not it.) Answer: They've all vacationed in Cabo San Lucas—located on the southernmost tip of Mexico's Baja Peninsula, where the Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Cortés meet. Though the Duke found it an ideal fishing spot during the 1940s, celebrities nowadays escape to the dessert oasis in search of a little rest and relaxation in the form of pristine beaches, delectable Mexican cuisine, and pampering at one of the area's many resorts.

Fashioning ourselves celebrities of sorts—at least in our minds—and further compelled by the chilly weather, a few girlfriends and I recently indulged in a long weekend at Marquis Los Cabos, a resort that promises to "rejuvenate your body, sooth your mind, and feed your soul," according to their website. At $440 a night, we certainly hoped they keep up their end of the bargain—we weren't disappointed.

Although we loved eating octopus ceviche while lounging by one of the many pools and getting deep-tissue massages at the full-service spa, it was the little things that won us over. Rooms have ocean views, hydromassage tubs, and Bulgari toiletries (a good sign since you can tell a hotel's attention to detail and service by their bath products). Plus, each morning we awakened to a complimentary breakfast and a New York Times synopses placed in a little cubby-hole—you can't go wrong with fresh coffee, warm rolls, and a gentler version of the news. Also, turndown service is accompanied by strawberry cake or some other delicious treat.

Of course, you can't go to Cabo and not leave your hotel, especially if you want to party like a rock star. So we headed to the most obvious of places: Sammy Hager's cantina, Cabo Wabo. The multi-level bar is decked out in momentos from Hager's Van Halen days, panties dangling from the ceiling, and Mexican kitsch. From the looks of it, this is where Midwestern parents (sporting t-shirts that read "Yes, I do want a beer and that's my final answer.") go on spring break like sojourns. They especially went wild when former Guns & Roses drummer Matt Sorum, now with Velvet Revolver, hit the skins with the house band for a rendition of AC/DC's "You shook me all night long."

After watching moms dirty-dancing while downing coronas, we scurried back to the safety of Marquis Los Cabos, where we could pretend to hide from the paparazzi—and Cabo Wabo. Whew!

Suit is one of few things settled regarding lost sub

By Onell R. Soto
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
November 6, 2005

Where is the Looking Glass?

The 65-foot-long yellow submarine was supposed to arrive in San Diego a few years ago to take up to 46 tourists at a time on hourlong undersea adventures.
A Mexican tugboat, the Rosarito, left Cabo San Lucas towing the Looking Glass and a 35-foot tender, the Mary Margaret, on April 5, 2002.
Five days later, the Rosarito returned alone.
Its captain, Ernesto Garfias Ramirez, said a freak storm claimed the ships his tug was towing a day and a half into the 1,000-mile journey, about five miles off Baja California, 100 miles north of Cabo San Lucas.

But the owners of the Looking Glass are unconvinced.
They spent more than $3.5 million to buy and refurbish the sub and get approval to take tourists underwater, only to have the effort end with word that their dream was gone.
"I have some serious questions about it," said Marvin Kottman, an aerospace dealer who led the group of investors behind the Looking Glass. "We're not sure it actually sank."
He sued the tugboat company and its owner in San Diego federal court. At the very least, Kottman hoped to get his investment back. At best, a trial would suss out what happened to the submarine.
Now that's out of the question.

Kottman and the towing company he sued recently settled the lawsuit.
"The whole trial became so expensive that we just, as a group, we decided to throw in the towel," he said.
The settlement paid for legal bills, but that's about it, Kottman said in a telephone interview from his office in Nebraska.

Joseph Mirkovich, a lawyer for tugboat operator Porteadores del Noroeste and its owner, Héctor Fernando Margaín Velarde, said the settlement made sense.
The lawsuit has ended for "far less" than the $200,000 it would have required in lawyers fees to defend the case, he said.

The settlement was the end of Kottman's plans for the Looking Glass, one of two tourist submarines built in a Scottish shipyard in 1988.
The submarine was equipped with large viewing windows and could go 250 feet deep. It dove for about two years off St. Thomas, in the U.S. Virgin Islands, until its original owners went bankrupt after another company brought in a competing submarine.
It was bought by a French company and languished for years before Kottman's group bought it and took it to Florida for an overhaul in 1999.

"It was a beautiful submarine," said Bruce Jones, whose company, U.S. Submarines, worked on the overhaul.
The owners showed the sub off to the media in West Palm Beach, Fla., in July 2000, and said they planned to charge up to $99 for a ride.
"It's been a long time coming, and I am very excited," Kottman told a reporter at the time. "It's really a little more luxury than what most people think of submarines."
The Looking Glass was to become the first tourist submarine in the continental United States, one of about 40 submarines worldwide that take some 2 million tourists aboard every year.

It had lights for night dives, tubes that spat out food to draw fish closer and a floating robot that could take pictures of passengers through its large windows.
But no paying Florida passenger ever boarded the craft.
A federal law dating to 1886 bans foreign-built ships from transporting passengers within the United States. Kottman and his group applied for a waiver from the Coast Guard, but, after waiting more than a year, moved the sub to Cabo San Lucas, hoping to set up their business in Mexico.
Again, they couldn't get the approvals.
Kottman says he was "grossly misled" by a Mexican official into going there.
"We just decided after . . . a lot of wasted effort down there to get the submarine out of Mexico," he said.
San Diego is the closest United States port, and the application for the waiver from the 1886 law was still pending. He had conversations with officials about perhaps operating the submarine around Santa Catalina Island.

And so he contacted Porteadores del Noroeste, a tugboat company.
Lost at sea?
On April 5, 2002, the Mary Margaret towed the sub to the Rosarito, waiting outside the Cabo San Lucas harbor to begin the trip north.
A tow line was tied to the Mary Margaret, which in turn was towing the Looking Glass, according to the minutes of a meeting the ship's crew had with port officials in Cabo San Lucas a week later.
Everything was going well until about 10:40 p.m. the following day, when they encountered a storm, Capt. Garfias Ramirez said in the sworn statement. Waves broke over the submarine and the Mary Margaret.
Less than an hour later, with the wind blowing 30 mph, the waves swamped the Mary Margaret and it went under, pulling the submarine with it, the captain said.
The crew shined its lights where the two ships were supposed to be, but saw nothing but fog, water and 12-foot waves, he said.
The tugboat began to heel in the direction of the tow line.
Fearing for the lives of his six-person crew, the captain ordered the 2-inch-thick tow lines be cut.
"The waves were very strong," Garfias Ramirez told the port officials.
For 24 hours, the crew looked for the sub and the tender to no avail.

The tugboat company's owner called Kottman with the news.
"I didn't think it was going to be that big a problem," he recalled. "Submarines were meant to go underwater."
He expected to find the sub bobbing from the line tied to the Mary Margaret. But then he learned the captain reported the sub sank in 2,700-foot-deep water – more than 10 times deeper than it is meant to dive.
He checked with Jones, the sub expert, about the captain's account.
"It would be relatively difficult for that to happen," Jones said. The sub was airtight, and its ballast tanks – used to control its descent – had no water in them.
Kottman said he also checked the weather reports.
"All the satellite photos taken during that time period don't show a cloud in the sky in the entire region," he said.
The more he learned, the less he knew.
In the midst of that, a few weeks after Kottman's group heard of the Looking Glass's demise, the Coast Guard came through with its approval, allowing the sub to operate from U.S. ports.
Now, three years later, Kottman still doesn't know what happened.
"I'm not convinced that it sunk," he said. "I'm not convinced that it did not sink."
Jones said the Looking Glass is useless except as a tourist attraction.
It couldn't go very fast, or very far, and it wouldn't be good for smuggling. "It's bright yellow," he said.
Mirkovich, the tug owner's lawyer, said he doesn't doubt the sub sank, if for no other reason than the fact that it hasn't been seen since.
"If it didn't sink, it would have been visible to somebody, someplace," he said.
Besides, he said, there's no reason for his client to hide what happened to the sub.
"He got nothing out of it," he said. "The only thing he got out of it was a headache and to pay my attorney's fees."

Hills-Forrest Design at Paraiso del Mar to Open in 2006

Construction is underway on a new 18-hole design from Arthur Hills/Steve Forrest & Associates in La Paz, Mexico. The course is being built amid the tropical dunescape of Paraiso del Mar, a 1,700-acre residential/resort development.

Laid out on a secluded peninsula overlooking the Bay of La Paz, just minutes by water taxi from La Paz itself, Paraiso del Mar Golf & Country Club has been routed amid miles of pristine dunes and wildlife sanctuaries. Hills/Forrest has worked with this stunning setting to create what will be Mexico's first true links experience, not to mention the country's first Audubon International Signature project, when it opens for play in Fall 2006.

"This property has all the markings of a classic, pure golf experience," says Arthur Hills, founder and principal of Toledo, Ohio-based Arthur Hills/Steve Forrest and Associates. "The peninsula on which this land sits could not be more beautiful. The sandy, gentle roll of the topography inspired a design comparable to the great courses of the British Isles – with weather and climatic conditions a Scot could only dream about. Pieces of property like this one come along only once in a great while. Paraiso del Mar is special, something that will stand out in the Baja market and endure the test of time."

Located on the tip of Baja Peninsula, two hours north of Cabo San Lucas, La Paz is Baja California Sur's capital city. Unlike its neighbors to the rapidly developing south, La Paz still retains the small-town charm of a traditional Mexican fishing village.

More than 1,000 acres of the development's 1,700 acres have been set aside for wildlife sanctuaries and open space. The remaining 700 acres will be used for residential units, including single-family homes and condominiums, resort hotels and recreational amenities. A 10-year project, with its first phase due for completion along with the golf course next Fall, Paraiso del Mar will comprise more than 2,000 condominium units, 1,500 single family homes and five hotels (totaling 1,500 hotel rooms). It will also include tennis courts, a marina, swimming pools, a beach club, country club, church and miles of hiking trails.

Paraiso del Mar's primary developers are Fair Enterprises, headed by John Fair of Denver, Colo., and Luis Cano, a La Paz native and seasoned real estate developer in Baja California. Both men were previously involved in the Residences at Esperanza, in Cabo San Lucas.

Current real estate opportunities range in price from the low $200,000's to more than $1,000,000, and include 294 two- and three-bedroom homes and more than 400 two-, three- and four-bedroom condominiums. They range in size from around 1,450 square feet to more than 3,100 square feet. Owners have the option to buy a golf membership for $20,000 that offers access to all club amenities including golf. To date more than $100 million worth of real estate has already been sold. Future plans include a second 18-hole course.

As the development's centerpiece, the course at Paraiso del Mar Golf & Country Club will maximize views of the Sea of Cortez, the Cape of La Paz as well as the property's wildlife preserves and natural dunes. Now being built by Gravi Construction, the project is being directed by Hills/Forrest partner Brian Yoder.

"This course and the development complementing it are totally unique," Yoder says. "It's just so natural. Arthur says it reminds him of St. Andrews with the natural dunes formations and the gnarly vegetation. It's a fanciful comparison, with all the cacti on site. You won't see many of those in Fife. However, the Paraiso property also features huge swaths of ocotillo, which is gorse-like shrub without the yellow flowers – but with all the thorns!"

Yoder points out that designing a links course in Baja does require some departures from tradition. Paraiso del Mar G&CC will feature salaam paspalum turf, as opposed to fescues and bents. "And we have designed a couple irrigation ponds on the golf course. The 18th is a wonderful, short, drivable par-4 around a pond, which departs from the links model somewhat. But the vast majority of holes evoke a genuine links environment.

"You simply can’t beat the natural setting here. The 6th and 14th holes are both par-3s playing in opposite directions on a dune line overlooking the beach and the Sea of Cortez. The 13th plays up this high dune, right to its apex, so from the fairway you’ll see the flag waving but the horizon line will be the green surface itself. Standing on 13 green, players will be looking down on 14 tee. Great views and anticipation."

Paraiso del Mar G&CC will be Mexico’s first Audubon International Cooperative Signature Sanctuary, golf’s highest and most exacting environmental standard. No firm working in course architecture today boasts a stronger Audubon Signature resumé than Arthur Hills/Steve Forrest and Associates. In 1995, the Hills/Forrest design at Collier’s Reserve GC in Naples, Fla. became the first course in the world to earn Audubon International’s Cooperative Gold Signature Sanctuary status. Another Hills/Forrest creation, Oitavos Golfe Quinta da Marinha in Cascais, Portugal – host of the European PGA Tour’s Open of Portugal – became Audubon’s first International Gold Signature Sanctuary when it opened in 2001. Paraiso del Mar will be the second.

"There are wildlife preserve areas all through the Paraiso del Mar course," Hills adds. "Holes 1 through 4, 9 and 18 – that whole area plays through a protected environmental corridor. As a firm, we’ve always been committed to building golf courses that relate closely to the land and don’t require a tremendous amount of earth moving or disruption- always keeping in mind the strategy of the game and the elements that provide beauty in a golf course. It’s second nature for us. A property like Paraiso del Mar merely gives that philosophy a chance to really shine."

The La Paz area is renowned for its water-oriented activities. Several islands offshore of La Paz, such as Espiritu Santo Island, provide popular day excursions that may include hiking, snorkeling, swimming with the sea lions, kayaking, fishing, sailing and whale watching.

"This is a big whale watching and sport-fishing area, so I put an enormous whale-shaped bunker on the 13th hole," says Yoder, who notes that this demanding 545-yard par 5 also requires the circumnavigation of thick occotillo stands and randomly placed pot bunkers.

"Golfers probably won’t be able to appreciate the whale bunker fully; with all the hazards and a green sitting atop a primary dune in the distance, there’s a lot to catch the eye. But flying over the course into La Paz, you’ll look down and see this huge, whale of sand that fits the hole perfectly. Like most everything at Paraiso del Mar, it’s pretty darned cool."

About Arthur Hills/Steve Forrest & Associates

Arthur Hills/Steve Forrest & Associates is one of golf’s most prolific and respected course designers, with 180 courses to its name and projects under construction on four continents. Hills/Forrest was recently commissioned to design its first course in Bahrain, and the firm has projects under construction in Mexico, China and Sweden. The eagerly awaited Hills Golf Club will celebrate its grand opening in the spring, just north of Gothenberg, while Olde Stone, an exquisite new private club project, is nearing completion in western Kentucky. For additional information, call 419/841-8553 or visit www.arthurhills.com.

About Paraiso del Mar

Overlooking the Sea of Cortez with five miles of beach frontage, Paraiso del Mar is a 1,700-acre, members-only club and community situated on a peninsula in the Bay of La Paz. Paraiso del Mar was designed as a collection of neighborhoods that simultaneously reflect the ideals of small-town USA and celebrate the spirit of traditional Mexico. The project, which broke ground in June 2005, will be comprised of two-, three- and four-bedroom oceanfront villas, and two- and three-bedroom casas with views of vast nature preserves and the area’s first golf course. For additional details, call toll-free 888/789-4975 or 888/201-2825, or visit www.paradiseofthesea.com.

The Best Ha-Ha Start Ever for 130 Boats

November 3 - Turtle Bay, Baja California

Some 535 sailors started the 12th annual San Diego to Cabo San Lucas cruisers' rally on October 31 in surprisingly excellent conditions. The sun, blue skies, and warm weather had been expected, but the good wind hadn't been anticipated. It was calm until 10 minutes before the 11 a.m. start, at which point the wind filled in nicely, allowing crews to set spinnakers all across the horizon. It was the best Ha-Ha start ever. South of Mexico's Coronado Islands, the wind filled in at 18-20 knots, with the Santa Cruz 50 Rocket reporting hitting 15 knots several times. Robert Sutherland, at the helm of the mothership Profligate, racked up a burst of 17.7 knots. This on an afternoon when few expected much more than 12 knots of wind.
Chris, one of the crew aboard Profligate, enjoyed the mid-teen sailing speeds on the way to Ensenada.

It was a good afternoon for seeing sea life, too. First there was a pod of smaller whales by the Coronado Islands that we couldn't identify, then hundreds of porpoises for about an hour near the shore north of Ensenada, and finally a large whale that breached superbly directly in front of Profligate off Todos Santos Island.

Only in the Ha-Ha would you see a junk-rigged entry with a crewmember standing on the bow pulpit holding an umbrella. This is the Colvin 52 Pacific Enterprise.
Alas, the wind didn't last. The more inshore boats seemed to lose the wind shortly after dark, while the more offshore boats seemed to have at least a reasonable breeze until midnight. But the later it got, the lighter it got. Only about five boats sailed through the night, one of them the full-keeled Bounty II Linda.
Tuesday it was light all day long. But at least it was sunny and warm, and gave all the crews a chance to decompress from the busy lives they had been living in the States and while getting their boats ready for the trip.
Despite the light conditions, about four boats have returned to San Diego or temporarily dropped out in Ensenada with the usual problems involving engines, alternators, steering cables, hydraulics, and such. Hopefully they will all be able to rejoin the fleet.

Fishing — Yakima angler reels in $397,215 prize

By SCOTT SANDSBERRY
YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC
Yakima angler Rich Hochrein cuts the cord around the bill of his prize-winning blue marlin prior to the official weigh-in at last weekend's big-money Bisbee's Black & Blue tournament off Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

Four years ago, Bruce Bosley of Yakima won the World Billfish Series Grand Championship and his fishing partner, John Bullo, also took home a hefty cash purse.
Seeing that happen — and getting a chance to shake their hands after their success — had an impact on another Yakima deep-sea angler named Rich Hochrein.
"They were my mentors," Hochrein says of Bosley and Bullo.
He's not referring to anything they did to help him out, though. He hasn't even fished with them. Hochrein is referring, rather, to what they were all about.
"I think it's the emotional aspect, the fact that they were serious," says Hochrein, who owns Summitcrest Construction with his wife, Rita. "They weren't the drinking-party fishermen. They were the sober, 'hey, let's go catch a big fish' guys.
"And they taught me if you're consistent in what you're doing, it pays off."

For Hochrein, it paid off big-time last weekend, when the Hochreins finished as the fourth-place team in the Bisbee's 25th Anniversary Black & Blue Marlin Tournament off Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. The world's richest off-shore fishing competition with a
$3.3 million purse, the competition drew more than 900 anglers and 185 boats representing all 50 states and 12 countries.
Fourth place — in that kind of competition — sounds impressive by itself. The Hochreins' fourth-place prize money, though, is the capper: $397,215.

And Bullo, Hochrein says, was one of the first to congratulate them.
"It was my turn," grins Hochrein, who has been entering these big-bucks Bisbee's Black & Blue tourneys (the name refers to the two kinds of marlin) since 1996. He first went billfishing two years before that, and he was immediately — apologies for the pun — hooked.
"When you see a fish rip off 300 yards of line, your adrenaline gets pumped up," says Hochrein, 50. "When they can rip off three football fields of line in 10 or 15 seconds, that gets you going."
Hochrein paid a $5,000 entry fee at the Bisbee's event, expecting to have several other anglers joining him. He had also put in Rita's name as a team angler "just in case of a worst-case scenario," he says, though that isn't a knock on her angling ability. When the two had gone billfishing while she was pregnant with their oldest son Richie, who's now 8, she had caught four fish and Rich didn't catch a single one.

As it turned out, Rita would be his only partner in the Bisbee's event; Rich's buddies all begged off or couldn't make it for one reason or another.
Using a live 15- to 20-pound tuna as bait — "Ninety percent of the blue marlin just cannot resist fresh tuna," he says — Hochrein hooked a hefty blue marlin. It was "not long, but really chubby," he says, and when he landed it after a half-hour tug-of-war, he wasn't sure if it would be more than the 300 pounds necessary to make the cut.

That meant a calculated risk: Take it in and have it weighed, and be done fishing for the day — though Rita would still be allowed to fish — or release it. If they took it to port to be weighed and the blue was under 300 pounds, they'd be penalized a significant amount of weight off any other qualifying fish they might catch.
The captain was motioning to Hochrein that the fish wasn't big enough. The deckhand, though, seemed to think it was.
"I don't speak Spanish and that's what he was speaking," Hochrein says, "but he kept motioning that it was really fat."
The deckhand was right, of course — the 319-pound blue was fat enough to become the fourth-heaviest catch of the three-day event, earning Hochrein nearly $400,000.

"On the last day (of the three-day event), it was worth a try," Hochrein says of that decision to take it in or not.
"And it paid off."