Clear your calendars for a South Sound event! JoEmma Beach Meetup - May 16th 2015

[61_express]

Unfortunately they put the kibosh on vacations because we are short handed. :/ ended up having to work, hopefully they fill the vacancies soon so I can get a few days off. My wife wants to make a Seattle trip soon though.

[Kelly]

Bummer. Maybe you guys can plan for another event.

I got the boat as ready as I can with not a lot of time to do so. I'll be at the ramp no later than 0900. Karl as of right now, I'm boating solo as the wife and ungrateful teenager have made other plans as they weren't sure if I'd be back in time. Hope you can still make it.

[bruceb]

I'd have loved to go on this one, but 3 days notice doesn't give me time to get off work. Maybe we need an events calendar.........

[Kelly]

I originally posted this event on Jan 6...plus I brought it up at the meeting way back when. I know I've been gone but this was never not going to happen as far as I can tell.

Maybe you can make the next one.

[Karl]

Yes, we will be there 9ish

[Kelly]

First and foremost a huge thanks to Karl and Jody for coming out yesterday! Super nice people (cool dogs too!) and fun to chat with. Their boat is top to bottom awesome and I was amazed at how big it really is! The Skagit next to my Uniflite made the Uniflite look like a dingy!
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After some discussion while dockside we decided to just make one of the smaller loops around Hope Island and maybe Squaxin Island. Since it was really a shakedown cruise, especially for the big Skagit in the salt, we took it easy for the first 2 miles.

Leaving Swantown Marina:
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We decided to open the throttles up (forgive my ms paint skills):
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We only made it about 5 miles out when suddenly I had the warning horn go off on my outboard controls. Quick checks showed the water pump pumping and no strange noises. I shut it down did some other checks and it looked like my oil was low. Strange, no leaking of any kind and ran great two days earlier. Added some oil, let it cool down, talked some more as we floated about, fired it up and still had a red light on. It idled fine and pumped water fine, so we decided to putt our way back to Swantown. bummer.
Karl and Jody were great about the whole thing which was a relief as nobody ever wants to be "that guy" with the dead boat on the water. There I was.

I'm still troubleshooting the outboard...

All in all I had fun being on the water with another cool boat and great people.

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[Bflaherty]

Looks like a great day to be out on the water!! Sorry to hear about the engine problems Kelly, but rest assured at some point we are all "that guy"... When I had my old Performer with the original Merc1000 I was that guy at every event for about 3 years before we finally got all the gremlins worked out! That's the biggest benefit to going out with folks from this club is that everyone is willing to sacrifice their trip to help each other!

I am curious, Karl, what did you end up doing to get the motor ready for saltwater use?

[Karl]

Thanks Kelly for organizing the trip on Saturday. Jody and I had a great time. Since we forgot our camera, here is the only decent shot that we took of you with an iPhone. I'm glad we didn't have to do the "tow of shame".
Brian, I decided to install a flush kit in line with the water pick up. Since we will only be using the boat 10-15 times a year, I figured we can get away with flushing it really good each time. If it does eventually break down, I will put in modern power.

[Bflaherty]

Karl, glad you are trying to protect the original powerplant. Just keep a warchful eye on those aluminum exhaust manifolds as those will deteriorate rapidly in saltwater! And they rot from the inside out!! The rest of the motor should be fine with regular flushing as long as you have a thermostat low enough to prevent boiling the salt out (140 or lower)...