Thanks! Yeah that is great news.

She said quite a few people that work there have chosen not to get it.

She is a little scared because she had a really bad reaction to a flu shot years ago. But she knows how beneficial it is.

I'm sure she's aware, but just in case: I heard that people with severe allergies should be careful with this vaccine.

its all been temporary with the vaccine. so the decision is do i maybe get a temporary reaction that is a pain in the ass for a few days, or do i take a chance i get the virus and it kills me or gives me problems that follow me all my life..

oh, lets see which i should choose.

It's not similar to a flu shot in terms of what it does. And from what I understand from the research so far, there aren't any clearly significant side effects. There very well may be, but there isn't any indication yet - and there is pretty robust data so far.

What for sure will happen is tons and tons of people will experience things they don't like after getting the shot. Because billions of people are going to get a vaccine (hopefully, anyway). So everyone should brace themselves for hearing about all sorts of things different vaccines cause.

It appears as if my wife is not getting the vaccine, at least right away.

We aren't exactly sure what happened. We "think" that they were originally scheduled to go to the facility where she works and at the last minute were pulled. It was an administrative snafu but not sure at what level.

Wow....just wow.

I hope you've disappeared from here because you're so busy enjoying your new boat!

LOL, I wish. I just haven't had much to say.

The boat has been a "challenge".

The steering has never been right. My mobile mechanic tried several things but the steering continues to "slip". Whichever way the wind tries to push the boat, I have to constantly correct it because the steering system isn't holding the course. I can go 5 miles and turn the wheel 10 complete times.

I finally took it to another mechanic who was highly recommended. The technical reasons for the issue are quite a lot. The cliffs are "all ****ed up".

If you are interested....




My mobile mechanic also pointed out that there were some spots where the gelcoat had chipped off on the hull. When I got the boat on the trailer I cold see that the gelcoat was completely chipped off the entire keel. After googling it appears that this is probably something you wouldn't want to leave like that for a period of time.

Fortunately, I had a really good fiberglass guy recommended and he was only a few blocks from the mechanic so when the steering was fixed I hauled it straight to the gelcoat guy. This was good because that boat is so huge and a bit scary to haul. I feel a lot better after getting the trailer fixed up, though.

But, as they say, there's more.

When my mobile mechanic pulled the thermostat, an area around it crumbled so there is basically a hole in the engine. He filled it with jb-weld but that is temporary. I've been on a quest to find someone. Anyone, that might fix this. Nobody wants anything to do with it. Turns out everyone has heard about this on yamahas.

Another stroke of luck, though. The gelcoat guy knows a guy who he thinks will do it. I talked to him (the welder) and he knew exactly what the issue is but he said he needed to look at it to make sure he felt comfortable doing it.

Aorn, the boat is at the gelcoat guy's shop. The welder went by there to look but the boat was on blocks and they didn't want to get in the boat until it was back on something more stable. I should get word today or tomorrow.

One more thing. That trolling motor disaster. Well, the guy that sold me the boat contacted the manufacturer. Turns out it might have been a design flaw. The manufacturer sent me a new mount which I will put on when I get the boat back. I had the guy that designed the mount on the phone and took the opportunity to pick his brain about moving the entire trolling motor back a few feet. I've posed this question to anyone I think might know, including several minn kota reps. Nobody could give me a good answer. This guy, however, knew his stuff. He said if you don't have it on the bow, the boat will "crab". Which means it won't be straight into whatever force is pushing the boat (most likely wind). He said it won't be bad at all to move it where I want it, though. He said they have been working on a mount for this very purpose but haven't got everything worked out yet. I told him what I thought might work and he agreed it could but wasn't sure how it would hold up in the long run.

tl;dr I know. This is been a lot of both time and expense but in the end I believe we'll have a really good setup at about 1/3 the cost of a brand new similar boat.

Wife got her first dose of the pfizer a while back and gets the second one today.

Sorry to hear of the boat headaches. Hope these repairs get you going again (and that the welder can fix the engine issue).

Yay that Mrs. Boat is getting vaccinated. I've heard most people fell bad for one day. Hope it was easy for her too.

Haven't posted in a while. Not sure why.

WAY TLDR update of boat.

The boat has been quite an adventure, but aorn things are pretty good with it.

It looks like the last post had it at the gelcoat guy's shop. He fixed the gelcoat and it looks FANTASTIC!.

However, he didn't quite get the boat back on the trailer properly. More on this later.

The welder finally picked it up. I'm not really sure about this part of things. His communication was, um.... lacking. He never told me he picked it up. The gelcoat guy did when I asked. It sat at the welder's place for a while. I had to keep bugging him and bugging him. He would tell me "I'm doing it TODAY" only he didn't. I finally picked it up a couple weeks later when he said it was done. However, he wouldn't let me pay him. He told me to run it a while and if it worked, I could pay him. Well, it worked (maybe). I'm not entirely sure he did anything. It looks like there is a spot weld but I can't really tell. I texted him and called him to pay him but he never got back to me. I dunno.

As I mentioned, the gelcoat guy didn't put the boat back on quite right. Apparently he somehow did this by hand? He said he got a bunch of guys to help him. That's a big heavy boat so I'm not sure what method they used.

The boat was sitting about 6 inches back from the wench roller. This is a problem for several reasons. First, the trailer wasn't made for this boat and it was sitting back to far to begin with. So, when it sat back there was ZERO tongue weight. It would just sit on the trailer without the front stand down. Not good. Not good at all. To make matters worse, since it was 6 inches from the roller there was six inches of play in the strap that holds the bow. Not good. Not good at al. It was a really scary tow back (about 20 miles). The boat would actually try to lift the truck.

As soon as I got it home, I got the trailer guys to come move the wench forward. Additionally, I got them to put in some front bunks to help guide it onto the trailer better. And, support the bow from hitting the trailer. The bow was about 4 inches from the crossbar. They did this but the boat was now about a foot from the roller so the ride to the ramp was even scarier. Plus, the boat had some water in it from a recent rain. I was sweating the whole time to the ramp.

One more thing. The boat wasn't lined up on the trailer perfectly so after I put it in the water I had to shift the front bunks over a couple of inches.

The welder let me know that one of the trim motors was leaking so I had my mobile mechanic replace it. That was quite an adventure too. I won't go into the gory details with this but it took 2 days and me helping to get this one fixed. It was not easy.

The steering. Oh, the steering. We had the entire system replaced. New helm, cylinder, and lines. When I finally got it back and drove it, it still didn't seem right. It was much better but not quite right. I chalked this up to the way the motors were put on, and maybe play in the connecting rod? I kept thinking to myself that maybe it was normal and I was just imagining things. But, this past week we took it out for a booze cruise and there was so much play in it that you could turn the wheel almost a half turn before moving the boat. Not good. We bled the steering (we are getting real good at this) and it turned out to have quite a bit of air in the system. I read somewhere that when you fill a system for the first time it gets a ton of microbubbles and they eventually merge and create bigger air bubbles. Anyway, we bled the system and the steering is better than it has ever been!

So, as we stand things are looking real good. Hopefully I don't jinx myself. No leaks anywhere. Everything works as it should. Trailer is perfect.

Trolling motor update incoming..............

Sooooo......

We got the trolling motor put back together again. Worked OK but it is almost impossible for us to lift it up and put it down. It is mounted on the tip of the bow which is about 3 feet from the closes place we can stand. Generally one of us has to sit with our feet over the bow and sort of get it started while the other one grabs what they can. It is really difficult.

So, I came up with an idea to mount it further back. You can't just use the mount we have because the motor will stick out over the boat (on both sides) when it is up. A good way to destroy things while trying to dock.

I thought if you could swivel the motor 90 degrees you could have it pointing sideways when in the water and front to back when it is up.

I bought a boat seat swivel and the first try crunched the swivel. It just wasn't strong enough. There is a lot of torque involved.

So, I found a heavy duty turntable swivel from an industrial supply place and mounted it.

The whole thing took about 2 months of measuring and designing and a few days of installation but it seems to work.

If this doesn't make sense, here's a vid of the finished product.



I actually thing I could patent this. Nobody I know has this.

Gotta give a covid update. Got the first moderna shot 2 weeks ago. Bit of a sore arm but that was it.

Getting appointments is still challenging but I did a test run on the publix website and figured out how to get in. Got through the first time.

I guess I should post a couple pics. Sort of makes the boat worth it, eh?

First tuna of the year



got this bad boy on 25 lb. test. Best guess 6-7'



How about this spectacular sunset!

Seems like the boat's getting better? Congratulations! Nice pics too.

BTW, trolling motor video is private, can't see.

Thanks!

I think I fixed the video so everyone can see it.

Yep, video all set. Seems like a nice setup for trolling periods, looked like it was easy to handle.

Thanks for the update. Enjoyed the read.

We felt like we have finally gotten the boat the way we want it so we took a long trip yesterday. 60 miles offshore. That's about as far as I care to go, but I think the boat has another 30 or so miles of range if we needed it.

The boat was loaded with 5 people and full gas tanks. Ran like a dream. Had a great day and caught some really nice fish. This is a scamp.



This guy showed up 60 miles out and hung out with us.

That scamp looks like a monster! Did it put up the kind of fight I'm imagining?

Glad that the boat's squared away and you're enjoying it now.

Thanks!

Yeah, it put up a good fight, but manageable with the tackle we had. There a lot of things we hook that we can't get in. Mostly big sharks and goliath grouper.

It was a great trip, but fishing is fickle. We went out a couple of days ago and had a tough day. The wind was up a bit but it seemed manageable when we first hit the gulf. But it got rougher and rougher the farther out we got. I ended up turning around after 15 miles. We could have gone to our desired destination (another 20 miles) but we were getting beat up even in this boat and fishing in 4 footers is no fun.

We got back in shallower water and it was manageable but I'm sort of lost in that depth. We caught a shark and some small grouper but that was it. Fortunately, other than the wind, the weather was fantastic so we just enjoyed the day on the boat.

Got my second moderna shot yesterday. So far so good. I could "feel" it immediately. Like my body went into overdrive or something. Felt like the times I've been prescribed steroids. This happened the first shot as well but not as intense. Nothing but a sore arm today. Hopefully that's it.

Our neighbors got covid. The lady is pregnant which seems sort of scary, but she had nothing but mild cold symptoms and no fever. The husband, though, had it pretty bad. 102 fever for 8 straight days. Couldn't even keep water down. They went to the hospital but the hospital said they couldn't do much for him and sent him back.

Lol spoke too soon. I've had a fever most of the day. Don't feel that bad though. Just meh.

Good luck for the next few days. Do you have to move the boat or is it pretty safe on your lift?

Belated thanks.

I did tie up the boat, but the storm was a bit of a nothingburger. The water never came close to going over the seawall and the wind wasn't much worse than our afternoon thunderstorms.

One bad aftereffect, though. We've had red tide in the area and the storm blew a buttload of dead fish into my canal.