the boat died in marine stadium last weekend. it actually didn’t stop running, but the overheat alarm and guage showed that the engine was running way too hot. fortunately, it was only me, dave and elaina, so we didn’t have a huge crowd disappointed, and luckily we were in marine stadium so it was easy to just walk the boat back onto the trailer.

when i got home, i pulled out the water impeller, and like i expected it was completely gone. it’s supposed to be replaced every year, and eric and i had just neglected to do it. i found a great volvo penta parts shop in sunset beach, that had the impeller, circulation pump gasket (i had accidently removed the circulation pump first, thinking it was the impeller, so i ruined that gasket in the process), and the hose that connects the thermostat housing to the circulation pump.

rainbow marine, the parts shop in sunset beach had an awesome old-timey feel, with old guys that knew everything about my engine. i had printed out schematics with part numbers, and they were able to grab me everything i needed without me even having to pull them out. the total was $80.76, and when i handed him 5-$20′s, he handed me one back. and while $0.76 isn’t much money, that kinda thing is going to make me a repeat customer, and as often as i require boat parts, that can translate to quite a bit of money.

after the gym on tuesday, i put it all back together, and the temp seems to be running at a cool 160F with the hose attachment, so on wednesday we’re gonna take it to marine stadium to test it out, since we’re planning on going to lake perris on saturday. btw, we’ve got 3 spaces left for lake perris if anyone else is interested in coming. we’re gonna wakeboard during the day, and then camp saturday night.

the pic at the top is the old volvo penta 825940 impeller. every fin is supposed to be as long as the one in the top-center!

on sunday i took dave and his russian cohorts out wakeboarding. marine stadium was closed, but the water out in the long beach bay was a warm 75f. we spent about 5 hours out on the water, and today i was hurting pretty bad. this weekend’s supposed to be a bit cooler but i’m sure i’ll take out the boat on either saturday or sunday, so if you wanna get out there let me know.

the wife is getting up on just about every go, and is ready to start jumping the wake. well, maybe not yet, but at least she let’s me pull her fast :)

so i clearly underestimated her ability. before yesterday, taka had never even tried the wakeboard, having failed getting up on the water skiis twice last season, and having seen so many other peeps get yanked around by the boat to no avail. but yesterday, shali, sanam and me and taka took out the boat for some nice, non-pressure runs, and on her 4th attempt was up, and by the end of the day, she was up on just about every start.

it seemed we all figured a few things out yesterday… sanam almost got up, and probably will next time out. i think two instructions that i figured out in helping a beginner get up is 1. don’t lean back so hard and 2. turn your board immediately in the direction of your front foot. and shali’s getting pretty good at towing a skiier, and is finally letting me pull her fast enough so that a jump-able wake forms :)

around 4pm, the weather started getting pretty cold and it even started to sprinkle a bit. the water was cooler too at around 70F, so we dropped off the boat and had margaritas at acapulco, which is becoming the standard post-boating place to be.

we saw jen and james riding their cruisers right past us when we pulled the boat out of the water. that’s two weekends in a row. weird!

what should i have expected? this was my off-friday, and eric took a personal day since he had been working so hard so we decided to do a bit of fishing. it was a beautiful day, the boat was running well, the bait barge gave us a huge scoop of baitfish… things were looking up.

we decided to fish the pv area, since the bait barge guy told us that there were lots of calico in that area. when we came outside of the breakwater, the waves were pretty rough, and we were getting thrown around pretty hard, but we pushed on to our spot. we finally found a decent area, anchored up, turned off the engine and as i went back to setup my gear, i realized the bait tank had fallen off! all the baitfish had swam away and we didn’t have any plastics to fish, so we were fucked. on top of that the ride over had rocked our stomachs and we were already seasick.

so we pulled anchor and headed home. on the way back, a tugboat coming the opposite direction, seriously almost flipped our boat when i drove over it’s wake. it was kinda fucked up because i had the wake coming on my left and the breakwall on my right, so there was nothing i could do. instead of heading straight into it and taking on lots of water over the bow, i tried to straddle it, but the second wake literally took us completely airborne.

anyway, next friday the 13th, i’m staying home.

on saturday morning, eric and i spent about an hour tuning the boat: changed spark plugs (to autolite: the official spark plug of nascar!), adjusted the idle speed, pulled off the prop and cleaned out the line that got wrapped around it last week, etc. anyway, the boat has never run better. it would fire right away and ran strong the entire time. unfortunately, the wind was kicking up pretty hard by the time we got to where we wanted to fish, and the waves were so huge that as we were driving, the wave infront of us would cut off our view of the horizon. it wasn’t really dangerous at any point, because most of the waves were consistent and rolling, but it fucked with our heads and stomachs and after about 20 mins we had to head back inside the breakwater, where instead of fishing we just lounged around and enjoyed the nice day.

water temps are getting up to the mid-60′s in the marina, so maybe even next weekend we bring out the wakeboard?

i’ll prolly just cut and paste this onto fishin-impossible, but since there’s so little actual fishing involved, i thought i’d post it here.

on saturday morning, eric and i went out for an early/quick fishing trip, since we were supposed to meet ben and costin in la around noon. anytime we do anything under a time constraint, especially something that’s supposed to be slow like fishing, things always go wrong. we set up the boat and headed down to the marina in a quicker than normal fashion, but when we got to the gate (where you have to pay $10), i commented to eric, that we should’ve just followed the person that went through since the arm stayed up for so long. so he gunned it, and as soon as he did the arm came back down on the car. it was funny. we paid our money and got the boat out on the water.

we decided not to fish pv and instead just fish sardines off of cherry beach. the current was all messed up and it kept trying to push us to shore and we’d have to drive back out and follow the drift back in again. on one set, we realized we were way too close to the shore (about 10ft depth) and when we went to crank the motor, nothing, no power to anything. we quickly through out an anchor to prevent ourselves from beaching, and after about 5 minutes of checking out stuff, we realized that a main power connector had come lose. we tightened it and got out of there with no harm, but our nerves were rattled by this point.

with time running out before we had to head back in, we thought we’d try casting plastics and drifting sardines near the breakwater where we haven’t got skunked all year. i did catch a single very small calico to have at least something to show for the trip, but shortly after that as were we trying to set an anchor to fish a certain spot, i was reversing the boat slowly, when out of the corner of my eye i saw an orange flash. eric’s main setup (the nice real we bought for him as groomsman’s gift) had been hanging over the stern and the dangling hook had caught the prop, wound up around the prop and flung the rod and reel overboard. amazingly, as we looked over to where it flew, it was still connected to the prop and we were able to gaff it out very carefully and precariously. we got most of the line off the prop and at this point just headed the fuck home. there’s actually a bit of a knocking sound coming from the prop, which might be the weight somewhere in the outdrive, or a baitfish that i accidently dropped into the exhaust. i’ll try to figure it out this weekend =p

so in the spirit of being responsible, and fueled by the bolder/longer fishing trips eric and i have been taking on the boat, we signed up for boatus towing insurance. these are the same clowns that charged us $300 for fuel the one time we ran out. (the insurance covers $500/incident) it not only covers towing the boat in the ocean, but also rivers and lakes in CA/AZ/NV, and also covers the boat trailer and the tow vehicle.

eric texted me this morning at 4am asking if i wanted to go fishing, and while it’s hard as hell to wake up that early on a sunday, i was in my car about 15 minutes later. it was a wacky trip. when we stopped to pick up bait, eric stepped off the boat and as he did, his treo 650 bounced off the dock, the boat, and then found the 3″ gap between the two and sank to the bottom of the sea. even though we were out there earlier than usual, we still weren’t able to buy live squid, so we fished sardines and dead squid off the coast of pv. after about 30 mins, i hooked into a 3lb lingcod, which was the only fish we caught between us (and was promptly released… minimum legal size when it’s in season is 24″), but we got a few other solid hits in the spot we worked. after about an hour, the open sea was getting to us, so we spent the rest of the trip inside the breakwater off of san pedro with nothing but a few nibbles.

after we loaded the boat on the trailer and were heading back, we got cut off by this asshole on pch, and we had to brake hard (a.b.s. turned on), which is dangerous to do with a boat that has no brakes. i told eric, who was driving, to pull along side the fool so i could yell at him, and as i called him an “f’ing idiot that needs to learn to drive,” we realized his passenger was a driving instructor :) it was a fitting end to the day, and made for a good laugh.

check out the lingcod’s mouth. it’s blue/green… freaky!

weekend after next, we were thinking we’d do a fishing trip with friends. we’ll probably fish inside the breakwater, unless the weather is really nice and we can try outside. day fishing licenses are about $13, or an annual one is about $40. we also have enough gear/tackle for everyone, so if anyone’s interested, let me know.

eric and i took out the boat for the first time this weekend. the weather was perfect and the water was mild, but we still both got a bit seasick. we ended up spending most of the trip inside the breakwall, off of cabrillo beach, where we caught that monster halibut last year. the boat ran like a champ and while we only caught a single fish, it was great to get back out there.

we took the two tacos III out to cruise the naples channels and see the holiday decorations. i bought a 700 watt inverter and hooked up 50 feet of christmas lights to add to the festivness of the evening. we popped a few bottles of champagne and had a great time. hopefully this becomes a new christmas tradition.