Boat Thread

[Wiregeek]

For my sins, I inherited my father's 21' Hewescraft Sea Runner.. 

Got the first level inside cleaning done, going to try and get the second level cleaning (vacuum out and spray off the dirt from the boxes) and rebuild the fuel system this weekend.

"BOAT" stands for "Bring Out Another Thousand", I'm here to tell ya.. 

Anyone else do boating, or spend time on the water?

[Rajvik]

Used to do a little power boating with a 21ft Bayliner Capri, at least when us kids could convince the fat bastard to take us. He wanted a fishing boat, and ended up ruining the warranty and the clear coat rigging fishing rod holders into place.

What size/type engine does it have.

[Wiregeek]

115 yamahahaha, 2 stroke. praise be unto ALL that is holy, it's a self-injecting, so two-stroke oil and pump gas go into seperate tanks.

[Bob Schroeck]

Little boats trigger an "edge" phobia I have, so I don't do them. (What does an "edge" phobia mean? Well, I have no problem with heights. I can look out over the fence at the top of a tall building. But put me on a three-foot drop with no rail or anything and I start getting antsy. Medium boats to freakin' huge ships are just fine, because they have rails or whatever around the deck. Little boats, where there's pretty much nothing? Ack.)

[Wiregeek]

Interesting. If you're in the front or the back, there's a nice side that keeps you in. If you're in the cabin, you're _in_. This boat has a hard top, walls, and windows. No silly soft top!

[Jinx999]

"BOAT" stands for "Bring Out Another Thousand", I'm here to tell ya.. 

Old joke. A boat is a hole in the water that you keep trying to fill with money.

[Wiregeek]

not so sure it's a joke..

$2000 - new fish finder, nav, gps, transducer for same
$1000 - new marine VHF, marine VHF handheld
$300 - new switch and breaker panels (this will go up when I pick up ~500 ft of 12ga and ~40 ft of 8 ga
$700 - 2x new battery..

And I haven't even cracked the shell on the motor to start getting that checked out.. Oh! and I need a new axle..

[classicdrogn]

I suppose the question is whether the fun and memories of boating will be worth the effort andexpense to you. If yes, there you go, if not, well, eBay, or the kids these days are into Craigslist I guess?

[Wiregeek]

Oh, there isn't a question. This is my boat. The purpose of the thread is commiseration and sharing pain amongst other boat owners and water adjacent folks

[LynnInDenver]

Yeah, it's a bit like any other large object hobby... it's technically a *-shaped hole in something you try to fill with money. Anyone who mentions that it's "an investment", I always give a sideways look to. Whether it's a boat, or cars, or pinball machines, if you're in it for the "financial investment", you're doing it wrong and are going to get bit.

[classicdrogn]

Nah, nah, it's an investment all right, it's just one that pays its dividends in happiness. The only way you're going to make money off boating is if you sell them, or rent arena space, or smuggling I guess. It's like I said before, what counts is that the enjoyment you get out of it is worth the expense.

And people say you can't buy happiness! Obviously, they don't know where to shop.

[Mamorien]

Nah, nah, it's an investment all right, it's just one that pays its dividends in happiness. The only way you're going to make money off boating is if you sell them, or rent arena space, or smuggling I guess. It's like I said before, what counts is that the enjoyment you get out of it is worth the expense.

Or, as a great American author pointed out, "work consists of whatever a body is OBLIGED to do, and play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do." (Italics added.)

[Star Ranger4]

"BOAT" stands for "Bring Out Another Thousand", I'm here to tell ya.. 

OH MY.  Can totaly understand where you are coming from on that one, as my mom got bit with the sail power bug, for several years.  Only gave up her boat because she had no way to get it back into the water as well as the 'bring out another thousand' syndrome uyou mention.

there is a pot load of truth to the old wheeze about a boat being a whole in the water you keep trying to fill with money, based on her experiences.

[Rajvik]

not so sure it's a joke..

$2000 - new fish finder, nav, gps, transducer for same
$1000 - new marine VHF, marine VHF handheld
$300 - new switch and breaker panels (this will go up when I pick up ~500 ft of 12ga and ~40 ft of 8 ga
$700 - 2x new battery..  

And I haven't even cracked the shell on the motor to start getting that checked out..  Oh! and I need a new axle..

Getting a new axle, having worked in a boat trailer shop let me tell you this, get an axle that the spindles have their own grease fittings, DO NOT GET BEARING BUDDIES the problem with bearing buddies is that they cause you to push the grease from front to back, causing you to blow out the rear seal on your bearings.

[Black Aeronaut]

not so sure it's a joke..

$2000 - new fish finder, nav, gps, transducer for same
$1000 - new marine VHF, marine VHF handheld
$300 - new switch and breaker panels (this will go up when I pick up ~500 ft of 12ga and ~40 ft of 8 ga
$700 - 2x new battery..  

And I haven't even cracked the shell on the motor to start getting that checked out..  Oh! and I need a new axle..

Getting a new axle, having worked in a boat trailer shop let me tell you this, get an axle that the spindles have their own grease fittings, DO NOT GET BEARING BUDDIES the problem with bearing buddies is that they cause you to push the grease from front to back, causing you to blow out the rear seal on your bearings.

I've heard the same while doing my own research for building RV trailers.  Avoid Bearing Buddies. etrailer.com is a pretty good place to shop online from what I've seen.

[Wiregeek]

Eh, local truck parts supplier is gonna sell me a whole new axle for probably $1000, oh look, another thousand.

[Rajvik]

That's overly expensive from what I remember considering that it is just two spindles with hubs and an axle tube welded together. Now if it is a brake axle, which with a 21ft boat it honestly should be, and includes the brake hardware I can see it.

[Wiregeek]

that's the pipe, spindles, axle tube, springs, perches, brackets etc. May even come with rims and rubbers. not a great deal, but not horrible.

I hadn't considered brakes. To be honest, I'm still not considering brakes. The boat stops fine on the smallest vehicle I've ever towed it with on the worst terrain (coming down the pass).

[Rajvik]

That sounds a good bit better then, didn't realize you were including the springs and hangers along with that.i rescind my price complaint.

[ECSNorway]

I've been involved in sailing for most of my life. When I was young - and, perhaps more importantly, my parents were short of their 50's - we had a San Juan 24-foot sloop, kept it on Lake Ontario, did a lot of racing. Grand times. Among other things it brought me to my first public music performance. We'd take a couple of weeks every summer and do a circuit around the lake, up the coast to the mouth of the St Lawrence, camp out somewhere in the Thousand Islands, and hit Kingston before we headed back.

Time went on and culture changed, the yacht club we belonged to changed from a place serious sailors went to to a place where rich people hung around to just Be Yacht People. And dad got a new job that moved us an extra hundred miles away from there. So we ended up selling the boat. Bought a nice house, put my brother and I through Jesuit high school and on to college.

(There's an amusing story in there about my first time at scout camp, when I went for the "small boat sailing" merit badge....)

Eventually, Dad got bit by the sailing bug again, and we picked up a Lightning. This is a -tiny- little thing, about fifteen feet long and easily trailer-able, and we kept it on a trailer in our back yard when it wasn't in the water. It's meant for two or three crew and is a serious racing boat, but we really weren't much for serious racing at the time, so we just tooled around the bay and goofed off.

Sooner or later we decided that this was just Not Enough Boat, and Dad went all-in on a Beneteau 36, another nice sloop-rig a good bit bigger than the old San Juan. We had fun tooling around Lake Ontario some more with this one.

Of course, Dad and Mom are getting old by this point, and after Dad retired he bought a place in Florida and they started snowbirding. They joined a yacht club that had a sailboat you could sign out for a day or so at a time - I forget what type, it was old and small and kinda in pretty bad shape because they were mostly Rich Yacht People and didn't give a damn about it. So that was enough for a couple years, then Dad gets a wild hair up his you-know and buys another one - 32-footer, this time, I -think- another Beneteau but I'm not sure. I've only been out on it a few times.

This past summer, they decided that they were getting more good sailing time down there than up here, so they'd rather have the newer and more comfortable boat down there. Which entailed switching them around. My only part in this was digging up the title from the safe in their place here, and fed-exing it down to them. They apparently hired someone to truck it down as far as St Petersburg or so, and then another guy to actually sail it around to Venice, where their winter place is.

And so this Christmas break I got to go out on the new boat on the open ocean. Whee!

(Nostalgia moment: Anytime I go by a place with flagpoles, I get a flashback moment -- the sound of the halyards thrumming against the hollow metal poles just takes me right back and I'm out on the water again. Post office, McDonald's, anywhere with that right sound, and I just zen.)

[Wiregeek]

That's some good stuff. Sailboats are just.. majestic. I've always admired them.

The last time I got to go out on this boat with my father before the alcoholism got real bad, we put out of Valdez - the fight had started before we even got there, since Dad towed at 50 mph out of necessity. My truck has more cubes, more technology, and more weight on the pedal - I tow at 72, if the feel of the wheel keeps it real. We made way and moseyed out to Bligh Reef - yes, that Bligh Reef, where captain Joe Hazelwood fucked a lot of things up. We'd motor to the north side of the reef, shut off, and drift south under a perfect breeze, with no clouds in sight, and rockfish practically jumping into our welcoming arms. After we had all limited out, we fired up and motored around to Bligh Island, where we beached and tied off. I had a wild hair up my ass, so I grabbed the shovel out of the boat and went.. down.

I ran out of oomph not terribly long afterwards, but the hole I had dug was deeper than I was tall. Our primitive, unskilled inspection revealed no oil.

[Rajvik]

i am unfamiliar with whatever legend your referring to Wiregeek, please enlighten.

as to how fast to drive when towing, it depends on both the tow vehicle and the trailer. You can go faster with a heavier tow vehicle or with a trailer that has its own (electric) brakes, because they correspondingly stop better. the trick is to know your distances.

[classicdrogn]

If you mean the bit about Bligh Reef, that's the legend of a treasure ship that ran aground long ago.

1989 counts as long ago, right? You can get antique plates for cars manufactured then...

[Wiregeek]

Yep, that's the one.

As for towing, I'm almost 100% certain that the trailer did not have sufficient axle. ~2500 lb boat on a trailer with a ~2500lb capacity axle..

We're replacing that with a 5000lb or 6000lb rated axle.

[Rajvik]

Yeah, definitely to little axle, the 5k one will do nicely