Yes I made a deal with Mark for the little Whaler. He only wants the hull, i.e. boat, and will completely restore it and no doubt sell it. It's funny, when I went over there the first time a couple of workers -- Al and one other -- exclaimed "what a neat little boat". That said, I don't think that I'll regret this transaction but am curious as to what it will look like after they've done work on it and installed a new Evinrude motor.
They will take off the existing Merc and I will pick it up. I will probably bring it north.
Am I getting a head of myself ? Perhaps I am. Was it only yesterday that I pulled off the recoil start to access the electric start and worked on that ? Yes, that's what I did first thing and the electric start is now working like a charm. One of the nice things about that motor is that it idles low enough to be used for trolling, which the 40 Merc on the Whaler up north does not.
I've got the tiller in a drawer in the garage and it's easily installed and has a push button for starting. I'll bring all the hardware north -- steering wheel, cable, controls, along with the tiller ... I think ... until I find an appropriate boat to use the motor with. I'm thinking that I'll pick up an appropriate aluminum boat to use with the 25; it will be a great grandkids boat.
I talked to Jean and he's delighted to have access to the trailer so that he can pull his boat out of the water and sell it on consignment. If someone buys the package, including trailer, I'll get a couple of hundred back for the trailer. If someone buys just the boat, I'll unload the trailer separately. It was inevitable that I was going to have to license if for the upcoming year anyway.
So ... all items dealt with other than ensuring that the new (new to me) boat fit into the existing lift ! Wouldn't that have been a pain if it didn't !
While I drove the Whaler and Cassie over to the Marina to hand over, Sandy drove the car and trailer and Skiff. I took some things off the Skiff, including the new battery that I purchased just a couple of days ago and is destined for the Hydra Sport. We then went to the boat launch, put the Skiff in the water and I drove it home. Sandy returned home with the empty trailer.
Did I mention that Gene is going to store the trailer in his yard until he can get his boat ready for sale ? Yes, that's what's happening. I'm going to make one trip with it today to Home Depot to pickup some 8' 2x6's - more on that in a second.
The boat fits on the lift although it hangs out the back. It is, after all, 3' longer than the Whaler and it looks like the lift / roof were setup specifically for a boat that size.
Wanting to balance it out more, I did what I'd always expected to do if I hung a longer boat there -- I trimmed the deck on the dock. A little work with the circular and reciprocating saws and voila !
The cutout shape at the front already existed; I just cut it out another foot. The 2x6's that I'm going to pickup will be for doing some reinforcement as well as replacing the drop-down pieces that stop the boat from going under the dock as you put it in. I'll eventually replace the ones at the side as well, since they're getting pretty rotted away from seawater.
The boat runs nicely, as I expected. I didn't do very much running around but did run a few circles at speed in front of the house.
Now we need to go to the island. It's not a "comfy" boat like the Hydra Sport or Bayliner but it will do the job. It's hard to strike a balance between something that works nicely for fishing as well as going for a jaunt. Hopefully this will work. It will be a lot easier to pull up onto the beach. That was also one of the objectives.
Now we have to take advantage of continued nice weather !
Onward !
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