New Guy

I gotta post more often. It's been like a week or month or...year. Anyway, like always, you buy a boat, thinking it will be magical and then the cold, hard, salami of reality slaps you on the cheek. Last summer we went to the lake a few times and it was good. Until it wasn't. I was hanging out on my wife's uncle's (cousin's friend's sister's brother's) pontoon and my buddy was running around in the Nautique. Then he wasn't. It didn't sink or anything, it just didn't want to go anywhere. I attributed it to "something being wrong" and we hauled it back, loaded it up and then proceeded to loaf around and eat sandwiches and drink Capri Suns.

Boy, nearly a year has flown by. I tried to post a number of times, but if I hit backspace on my phone for too long, the page would go back and I would loose all my words and letters. So, I'm posting from my computer.

Anyway, I learned a lot over the winter. Did you know boats had fuel/water separators? I know, neither did I. I mean, like, I'd heard of them, but didn't believe they existed. Like the Easter bunny. Or tax cuts.. Anyway, you can rebuild your carb 4 times and it won't fix a water fuel separator full of water. What you can do is take your carb to a professional boat mechanic and he can take one look at your float bowls, give you that "you're an idiot" look and say, "Why don't you get the water out of your gas?" You know, cause I had been storing that water there in case I got thirsty on the lake.

So, to make a short story long, he sold me a fuel separator, told me to fill it with gas before I installed it, drain as much fuel as I could and go to the lake. I did. It was magical. 38 mph on very choppy Lake Pleasant water. I love this boat.

I'll post a pic and chronicle my winter progress tomorrow.

Wow, it's been a long time since I posted and half the summer is gone. I got sidetracked by trying to catch up on 18 years of defered maintenance on our Suburban. Replaced almost every gasket except oil pan and every sensor. Rear main was a little rough but only because the bolt on top of the tranny required like 50 miles of extensions and the patience of Buddha. Needless to say, it never made it back on.

Anyway, who cares about trucks, we care about boats. I rebuilt the carb and, uh, that didn't go well. At all. I guess my theory that Holley had a billion extra check balls laying around so they tossed some randomly in the carbs was wrong. Each one mist have a job and the one I found laying on the bench after the rebuild was meant to keep the secondaries from acting like little spoiled brats. The last two times I took it to the lake, I thought the secondaries weren't opening and it ended my day both times. Today I took the secondary vacuum pod off and opened it up to search for the check balls that the exploded diagrams say should be there. Of course it wasn't. So, I went to the work bench to grab it and, guess what. It wasn't there. Of course. Whatever. Ace is open tomorrow and they have bunches of bearings.

So, tomorrow I'll throw some coil packs, plugs and wires on the truck and a BB in the boat. At least Phoenix is known for having beautiful August weather.

In good news, I did lug the thing over to my buddy's house and bent the $250 Craiglist tower to fit. He whipped up some new mounts in AutoCAD and sent them to the laser cutter. Should be able to mount the tower next weekend unless I decide to have it powder coated.

Nothing specific is wrong with the decals, they just don't exist. By the time I had typed out a text to my buddy telling him I wanted to make blue stickers, I had already changed my mind and now I want orange with chrome accents. Which my wife said is hard to do. Lucky me. For motivation, I found this pic when I was test fitting the tower (which will be powder coated white) and Windows Painted the decals on.

Holy guacamole Batman. I just found the sticker files in the reference section! This makes me happy as a, well, a happy guy. A couple years ago I bought my wife a vinyl cutting machine so she could be the "best crafter in the whole wide world" and she used it exactly never. Time for that thing to get some bling.

Any thoughts on color? I'm a big fan of blue, but if color signifies year or something, I could be easily talked into using the year appropriate color.

I think it'll cut up to 12 inch high vinyl by 10 feet long. I don't see the stickers being bigger than that, right?

Ethanol snot!

baitkiller wrote: Relax, you'll be fine. My '79 is stock as a rock, except of course for the left handed Chevy, tower, paint, seats, instruments, bolsters and stereo. Like I said... stock.

Barefoot boom and the ropes need to attach to the front of your boat, usually at the eye in the front of the boat under the nose. The ropes hold the load of the barefooter while the attachment at your ski pole just locates it.
You can use these to teach people to ski or barefoot.    They are close enough so you can talk with them as they are trying to learn.
As far as real barefooting, Footing on a boom is similar but not close to the real thing.
If you fall on a boom you just hang on and recover and get up again.
If you fall while on a long line you get the full monty including the pain, eye lids peeled back and some bruises.   It teaches you not to make that mistake again.
The boom does allow you to work on proper technique and stance which will save you many painful crashes as you learn.

It is in my mind a barefoot boom. Made by Casad possibly? I agree that it does seem extra long!

It has a manufacturer's sticker down on one end and there IS some sort of mount on the pylon. After I get home from football practice I'll see if the mounts make sense. If it is an extended pylon, it's gonna be tall. Super tall. Walking tall tall.

Here's me and the Colonel. I found him shortly after I found the house passing out jello shots for Halloween. I assume not to the kids, but honestly, I'm not sure.

Your both wrong- that's a downrigger, used to get the bait down where the fish are when your trolling. Probably left over or repurposed from some old Fish Nautique

If you are seriously asking that question, looks to be an extended pylon, perhaps a home made version of one or possibly a barefoot boom, again home made possibly

Anybody can dig up a picture of a Holley carburetor, I'd rather see you and the colonel

Whatever you do: keep posting! Diggin' your style of writing, so continue those projects and let us know how they go.
They're awesome boats, so even if the BOAF turns into a BOAT, it'll be worth it.

Probably, I bought a tower a few weeks ago and it was $250 off Craigslist and I still have to make feet for it. Also, I have to throw it in the bender because it, uh, doesn't exactly fit. The bender is going to crack the anodizing, so then I'll have to get it powder coated. My Craigslist bargain is probably going to double in price. So, was it really a bargain?