Well last weekend had more ups and downs than, well I was gonna say gas prices but that would imply a whole lotta ups.
The day started beautifully. We backed the boat in slowly. There was a slight “mist” over the water. You could hear the last songs of the crickets and frogs. I looked out over the water and saw a bird skimming across the water. The only other sound was the tires on the boat ramp as we backed into the water. The sounds of the water as it moved against the boat. It was magical as I turned the engine over and it started to purr…….
Ok, none of the above was true. We backed in the boat to the sound of kids bickering, a horn honking and the engine in my boat struggling to turn on. Vrooommmmm (shoot, it’s in gear, luckily reverse) sputter and die, start, sputter, die…holy crap its gonna be a long day, vrooooom, vroom, sputter, sputter, slowly making my way to the dock. ….
OK, at the dock, sputtering a bit more, load up and lets go. Maybe it’s the bad gas. Attempt to make it past the “no wake zone” and open it up. Past the NWZ, here we go. Throttle forward, throttle forward, throttle forward, ok NOW we are starting to move, finally floor it. We move up from 5mph to 10mph in about 45 seconds, lol…now it’s moving faster and after about 2 minutes it planes and we are zooming at a whopping 30!
We get to the damn which is maybe a ¼ mile away. Kevin says hold on a second, raised the engine cover and water is pouring out. I ask stupidly, is it supposed to do that? He tells me, “Nope. Don’t think so”. Turn the boat around and make it back to the dock, load it up and start diagnosing it. Looks to be one of the pipes coming from the water pump. He pulls it off and sure enough the gaskets are ate up. Well we drive BACK to Killeen and go to Texas Boat world and luckily they have 2 left. We install and head back to the lake. We put her in and this time it starts the first time. We get everyone loaded up and life vests on we take off. We get to a fairly likely spot and stop, tie off to some trees and begin to fish.
A dozen casts later I pull in a bass and it’s a lunker! I decide to throw him back though (cough, cough). We fish for awhile with no luck and decide to try another spot.
Side note: Have you ever had 4 people try to fish at the same time on a 17 ft boat? Its fun!
As we move we decide to try and troll. It wasn’t easy so we pull lines in and just move. We get to another spot, Kevin ties us off again and we start fishing. At some point Cody actually gets a fish on. He gets it to the boat and I try to grab it, it flops off and back into the water which is fine as it wasn’t legal length. He does get credit for the catch though…We continue fishing and at some point Kevin makes the astute observation that we are moving. Seem the “tree” we tied off to is a low floater (that sounds a bit Seinfeldish doesn’t it..) well we decide to move again.
This time we tie off to a real tree. Doesn’t do much good though as we catch nothing. We know that it’s probably because of the time of day and decide to just cruise for awhile. Kevin wants to adjust the carburetors and throttle so he does so while we putter around. He finally gets it to where it idles correctly and the throttle actually works closer to the way it should and we begin our trek back to the other side of the lake.
We are cruising along, just enjoying life, wondering what the poor people are doing, when suddenly “CLUNK”. The boat stops like we have hit a wall. We try and try to get it restarted but even I , as dumb as I am about motors, realize it ain’t happening. Blake and Sydney pick up the paddles, which I remembered to buy but was hoping never to use, unlike an anchor that we could have used but I hadn’t bought, duh…. We make it to the side and tie off. I get on the phone and eventually get a hold of the Bell County Sheriff’s office. They send a deputy and she makes it to the Cedar Gap boat ramp and finds two guys willing to tow us. They come out and I will be Double Dog D*&^%ED if they don’t have the boat I WANTED TO BUY back in the day. They tie off to us and tow us back in defeat. We get loaded up and head back home.
I find a boat forum and am currently trying to work with them to find out what needs to be repaired. Hopefully with the help from the guys at www.marineengine.com, we will get this problem diagnosed and get this boat back in the water soon. Cross your fingers.
P.S. Did Ann make the right decision not to go out today or what!?
P.P.S. The front yard and pool are both looking good so the weekend wasn’t completely bad…..
