Close your eyes and imagine not being able to see anything but dark brown. While you see this dark brown, you are swimming into a current, pushing yourself away from the bottom of a boat with your hand as you swim towards it. Inside your wetsuit are small shrimp, 1000's of them. All crawling, biting, squirming. In your hair, nasty little bugs. Yeah, its gross, hard work. When you have spent 2 hours, kicking like crazy you have a last effort to return to a boat. Only you weigh 400# now, with all of your gear. I enjoy punishing myself.
Here I am cleaning our boat bottom. So far I have done 3 types of bottoms. The first one was ours. Its a fin keel. It has a very long waterline, but only a 12' keel in the center jutting down into the blackness. Our bottom paint is somehow still good after 5 years in the cold New york waters. We only had a layer of silt. It has not been cleaned in a year, so I have no idea how it only has silt on it.
The second was a 26' sailboat with a wing keel. Not only did it have two keels, but it had bad bottom paint. I ended up scraping all of it with the 6" knife. In the end he lost a lot of paint because those hard shelled critters don't let go. I also think the paint was poorly applied, It seemed to not adhere to the bottom of the boat. After this I reserve the right to adjust the price according to how bad the bottom is. This was badly neglected.
The third boat was a full keel 43' spindrift. The bottom was covered in small shrimp, like I told you earlier.
Its not that it was bad growth, It was just living growth. No fun. I came out covered. The fun part was chasing Dana while covered in bugs.
Engine. I found a great deal from a marine repair shop
Or so I thought. I got a 1970-80 johnson 9.9HP, for $375. It came with a 30 day warranty . So I was having an issue with it, so I took it back to the dealer. It is the boat repair place at riverside marina, St Augustine. This guy is unbelievable. He said it was the water pump, and the water pump is not part of the warranty. wait, WHAT? In some stretch of the imagination he thought I sucked up a plastic bag, or mud and it would not be covered. I said, you gave me 30 days, he says "It does not apply to this"
Oh, so that 30 days has some exclusions that are not mentioned until I have an issue? AVOID!!!!
I have spare time, and will take him to small claims. He has not heard the last from me.
So after this discussion, with him becoming irate, he goes and now you owe me two days storage on the dinghy...... Really, he asked me to bring it in and leave it.... I said, oh yeah how much is that... he said take your (expletive) and get out. Class act. This guy is a serious looser, and is not knowledgeable in, well, anything except how to be a jerk. He speaks fluent jerk. I ordered the parts from west marine, hopefully this fixes the issue of it skipping out of gear when hot as well. Guess I am learning outboard repair...
Before you leave, we are now an Amazon partner. As part of the program we can offer you a 30 day free Amazon Prime membership. If you do not like it or want to keep it, you may cancel anytime! Check it out.
30 Day FREE amazon prime membership!!! Sign up now for this special trial. Cancel anytime.
