Well... it's been a while. Last month was H E Double Hockey Sticks!
1 - full week of jury duty
2 - second week was vaction which was awesome - but while I was cruising the Caribbean, I happend to turn on the news to see AIG was in trouble (remember I'm an underwriter... well here's the great company I work for...) So for 6 days I was pooping bricking wondering if I was going to have a job when I got back home. And I do still have the job, and will have for some time - we are now becoming the backbone for AIG
3 - brokers going nuts asking tons of questions for their insureds, and us having to go through all the details of how it was the parent company in trouble, not my division which is pretty much financially set
4 - my wonderful 80lb 9 month old German Shepherd must have got hungry because he ate.. and I mean ATE my wiring harness on the trailer (don't ask how I know he actually ate it... it wasn't pretty, but he sure had a bright tail light when he hit the brakes).. anyways, he left me 1/2" to connect a new harness to... needless to say I wasn't happy
anyways, enough bickering.... on to the good stuff!
I am now about 3/4 of the way finished with my boat. I still need to paint the insides and move the bunks on the trailer. But after the shotty month I've had, I needed to get it in the water for the maiden voyage. I got to the ramp at 8 (when the gate opens) and left at 5 (when gate closes). All in all it was a good day, but I did see a few things that would have to be fixed.
No leaks (thank God) and it is very stable - much more stable on the water than it was on the trailer with me walking around trying it out.
1 - on the way to the gate, I get on the interstate and right when I get up to 55mph, I happen to look in the rear view to see my middle bench seat doors fly up - I had 3 EXPENSIVE rod/reels laying across them... luckily they only lifted up with the door, but I still bout busted a nut trying to get on the shoulder. I fixed it for the rest of the trip with a long tie strap I had behind the seat. So the first thing I gotta do is rig a bungee cord from one side to the other to hold the seats down. You'll notice in the pictures that they open front to back. I did it like this because I didn't want them to open to the front seat, I wanted to be able to sit there and get into the middle console to change baits. I also mounted a center console I got from WalMart for $3... that was great. I wasn't looking for my scissors, needle nose pliers, cell phone, scents, camera... and most of all my Mountain Dew!
And here is everything that fits in it... that's almost all of my tackle, line, 2 batteries... Awesome storage - and it's functional
2. Batteries
I only decided to go fishing yesterday, so I had to run power lines - at 11pm there's not too many places that are open, but luckily WalMart had 6' 4ga wire (10bucks) with connections on both ends. I couldn't find any type of junction box, so I just attached the trolling motor wires directly to the 4ga. I had both batteries charged, but I didn't run them in parallel like I plan on doing. I figured that I would carry both, and if one battery ran out, then I could just switch places with them. Turns out - that walmart battery ran me ALL day, and I mean ALL day. No anchor, and it was windy. I hooked it up when I got home, and it still had 75% remaining. I'll be buying another so that both batteries hooked in parallel will be the same.
3. Front Stop... ok, I don't know what it's called
This was my biggest problem on the whole stinking boat. The handle on the winch was too long, so I could only make a half turn to let the strap out, or bring it back in. I moved the bracket down, fabricated a piece of steel to fit between the bracket, then screwed 4 - 3" screws into a 4x4 block of wood that I carpeted. It only took me about 15 million ideas before I came up with that one. Works pretty good too - it just needs to be about 5" longer.
4. Stickers
OK, so I finally got around to putting my new stickers on (check out
https://www.namemyboat.com.. they have a ton of different fonts and other variations you can create... not to mention cheap prices. While I was putting them on, my wife (who wasn't helping, but was reading the directions to tell me what I was doing wrong) told me that they aren't supposed to get wet for a couple of days after putting it on. I hope that only means washing it - I don't think it got that wet while it was in the water. Either way, these went on better than any I have ever done before... and I've done a lot (I used to tint windows, so when vinyl stickers for the windshield were popular, I was the one doing them)
Well... I guess that's about it. I've still got to paint the inside. A friend of mine gave me some Herculiner, but I'm still undecided if I want to use it. This boat makes almost no noise which I found odd, but not I'm fussing. I'll try to update some more later this week.
