Decided to do a shakedown cruise with the boat today with mixed results. It's a 1965 Crestliner 14ft runabout. Did get it in the water, that's about the only good thing that happened.
I picked a small inland lake where I figured there would not be a lot of people so I could do my thing without a lot of people around. That way I could take my time as it turns out there is a learning curve to this boating thing. Also there was nobody to laugh at me other than The Old Lady, and she does that a lot anyway.
This picture was supposed to show the boat sinking. The water was coming in at a good rate around the drainplug. I pulled it back out of the water to fix the plug, but couldn't find anything wrong after the water drained out. So put it back in and had the same problem, but this time I tightened the plug and stopped the water coming in. At least this time I got the outboard motor to run. The last time (about 8yrs ago) I put it in the water I couldn't get it started. But there was a problem with the way it ran. It would kick back while running like if it was out of time, but not constantly, it would run for a little while and then kick back and run again. A while back I called it a Lemonrude (Evinrude) and people laughed, maybe I was more right than I thought!! If I can't get the motor to run smoothly, I may have to buy another one.
We did do a little spin around the lake and at one time the compass was spinning like a whirling dervish. There must be a large deposit of iron ore under the lake.
Another thing that happened was I blew a brake line on my truck. The line to the rear wheels blew and I only had front brakes after that. At the time I thought maybe I blew a wheel cylinder because I could see a trail of brake fluid on the ground. At least it happened while launching the boat, not when I needed to do a quick stop from highway speeds. Because I knew the brakes were not up to par, I tried to keep it under 60mph on the way home. When I got home, I crawled under the truck and saw the brake fluid was coming from the line just before it connects to the flexible line to the rearend.
*google is a wonderful thang
