The sun bright and warm, I rolled up to the Oceanside Post Office on Avenida Del Oro late in the morning of January 22. The big islands of Santa Catalina and San Clemente projected from the Pacific in the Santa Ana conditions, and the heat of the sun made me think about my long-time good friend, angler Ted Crane of Huntington Harbor, lying in hospice at the age of 84. The news came to me last weekend, when Ted's fishing buddy Mike Randel of Aliso Veijo was waiting to board Intrepid on a trip he and Ted booked earlier. Mike said a pacemaker and radiation treatments had failed to help Ted, and that Mike had visited the hospice to say goodbye. I first met Ted Crane many years ago on the Qualifier, and we struck a relationship that endured. Over the years I learned his life story; he'd been a surfer all his life, and a fisherman. He was just about the most tanned man I ever saw, and when we were out fishing on numerous long range boats, Ted always sought a sunny spot on the upper deck to catch more shirtless rays.

Being an old-style surfer, Ted felt he was impervious to the sun. He pooh-poohed the notion that you could get too much of it. He surfed on the Pacific all over southern California, in Hawaii and many other countries he'd visited during WW II, when he was in the Navy. If the blood cancer he recently developed was because of overexposure I wouldn't be surprised. If the sun was out, Ted usually took his shirt off, though he kept his hat on. He strongly favored his lucky red shorts for fishing.

He was a trained artist who'd been to architecture school, with a fierce loyalty to USC. There were few football games the university played that Ted missed on TV or by personal attendance, and he'd gone as far as Texas to watch his beloved Trojans. Whenever they played my team, the Oregon Ducks, Ted and I would relive the games later.

Widowed early in his marriage, he raised his son alone. Ted owned a business, Artistic Diploma Frames, in Costa Mesa. He often said he sold framed and mounted diplomas of all sizes to grads of every college in the country. He toured campuses each spring for the purpose. A true waterman, Ted lived aboard his boat in Huntington Harbor. It was his love of the ocean and his thriftiness that prompted that; he usually bought his fishing gear used, at low prices, though he knew the value of things and mostly got good stuff.

He won the Accurate reel in my prize drawings on two long range trips in succession, so on the next trip I told him he was ineligible for that round, as far as the reel was concerned. He took it with the same good nature he always showed, and we joked about it on the next couple of trips. He asked that I tell him first whenever I booked a trip, so he could buy a ticket if one was available.

On a trip to Alijos, Ted had the hot wahoo hand, and got his picture in the Sportfishing Calendar with a nice skin, a beauty caught on the reel he just won, parked on the rail.

We fished a lot of places: Cedros, Benitos, Alijos Rocks, The Ridge, the southern banks, Hurricane Bank and Clarion among them. He loved to catch yellowtail on bait or iron, and he had a special knack for being lucky and unlucky. On our last trip aboard the Independence, Ted was the only guy on the boat who didn't get a wahoo until skipper Jeff DeBuys made a special wahoo troll "for the virgin," on the last day. He got one. Later that same day he became the only angler on the boat to get a good tuna at The Rocks. It was the only time any of us could remember when there were no yellowfin there. At Clarion some years ago, he became the first man I ever saw to get a cow, his first one, on four outfits. The crew said there was over a mile of line out with that tough yellowfin. That earned him a page in the calendar, too, and a part in the video I made, "300-Pound Tuna." I called him "Teddy Boy" affectionally, without any serious reference to the British Mods and Rockers of another time. Ted didn't mind. He called me "Billy" is return.

Crane loved to watch movies. When he wasn't fishing, sunning, eating or sleeping on the boat he'd be in the galley viewing the flicks on the big screen or his little DVD player. At night I'd wake up and see Ted flat on his back on the longest bunk, a six-foot-six dude with his player screen up, facing him shedding light, parked on his chest, as he snored.

We didn't talk much about religion, or politics. We had agreement that when the time came, we hoped to pass quickly, without lingering in pain. I wish Ted had made this last trip, but he didn't. I wish he'd walk out of that hospice, but I know he won't. I wish I could have said goodbye to my great friend, but his pal Mike Randel said he was heavily sedated. So I'll wish him well on his final journey, and hope to see him again in another place, at the rail.