Sink or Swim

By Uncle Hans

There was an interesting set of pictures from Cable Lake from this summer that did not get made into a blog.  Oversight , I guess.  I have this old boat. (surprised?  ALL my stuff is old).  Three years ago, the oil injection pump failed and the motor, which was a real honey, was ruined.  Turns out that the oil injection systems in the early models were so bad that the dealers routinely disconnected them and told the owners to mix their gas with oil like the old days.  Kids are gone.  Boat is low priority.  Boat goes to garage to sulk.  This year I found a new motor and decided to relaunch.

 
     The boat has an old patch from years ago.  During the sulking, the patch rotted or softened or whatever.  I proudly launched my boat and new motor and got about 100 feet and noticed water swirling about my feet.  Renee climbed up to stand on her seat and scream "TITANIC!".  My boatlift was another 300 feet and I had put it in a position to receive the boat already. I gunned the new motor and the race was on.
    We made it, but just barely.  We almost came to rest on the bottom.  It ruined a $300 stainless propeller.

    We were safely on the boatlift.   Wheeewww!

  .........now, however, we have a sinking boat, safely on the boatlift, 400 feet from the boat landing and the trailer needed to take it to the boat repair guy.

....a few years ago, I built this solid sun shade for the boat lift out of aluminum.  I used some towing straps and come-alongs to raise the boat so access could be gotten to make the repair.............on the boatlift..........

....then I convinced my boat repair guy to make a house call, lay on his back (like Michael Angelo painting the ceiling of the Sistine chapel),  on a piece of plywood, over the lake, under a heavy precariously suspended boat.
      ......ain't money wonderful?

    .......It took him about 2 hours to do the fiberglass repair............

.......he used a simple inexpensive kit and a chunk of fiberglass he slipped inside and bolted to reinforce.....

......now she is as good as new.  We re-launched it with the new motor.  It was great when we went around the lake and felt the breeze on our faces.  Trouble with the breeze on our face is that it took the smell of burning plastic away from our noses.  The new  (actually, old and used, Duh?) motor has a failed water pump and our ride was ended with yet another ruined motor...........

 

....here I am paddling "back to the drawing board"................

We did eventually find another old, used motor.  They are scarce, for some reason.  It runs well enough to do some tubing, but need some tuning and a power prop to do skiing.

Next year.............

Uncle Hans