The rain poured down in sheets of gray. The deluge overtook all the typical morning sounds. I couldn’t hear gulls squawking or halyards clanging. Standing under a covered fish-cleaning station beside charter-boat row at Crandon Marina on Virginia Key off Miami, I could hardly make out the boats at the other end of the harbor. Yet somewhere beyond the breakwater, in the thick of the downpour, the crew of Contender One was coming back from a bait run.
With the last sailfish tournament of the season kicking off in two days, the team needed to fill their bait pens with fresh goggle-eyes, pilchards, greenbacks and speedos. If you want to compete with the best sailfish crews in South Florida, you can’t sit at the dock. You must keep going, and this veteran team was not about to let a storm slow them down.
I sent a text to Amanda Sabin, the head of marketing for Contender Boats and the lone female on the C1 fishing team. “How you making out?” I wrote. She sent me back a photo of the sky through the windshield of the 44-foot center console. It was a color photo, but the clouds appeared black and white and menacing. “Running through storms,” she replied.
About 30 minutes later, I spotted the big center console idling into the marina. The crew looked, Capt. Quinton “Q” Dieterle’s classic 45-foot Hatteras charter boat. Dieterle has fished these waters for more than 30 years and runs , Contender’s flagship model rigged to the nines for tournament fishing. Powered by triple Yamaha 450s, the boat is a sleek mix of power, purpose and performance.
