Hull Finished & A New Top

After a week of working on it, I finally put the finishing touches on the hull damage. It took three coats of Marine-Tex epoxy to fill in the deep ones, and countless hours of sanding, steel wooling, and finally polishing. Sanding removed the gloss and shine off it, so I used a super fine #0000 steel wool to smooth down the sanding to a fine finish. After steel wooling for what seemed to be an eternity, I grabbed the orbital buffer and some of the Meguiars Oxidation Remover. It's a somewhat gritty polish, but that's what I wanted to start with.

Lesson Learned: keep head away from buffer to avoid splattering! even though it smells good, the taste isn't. Here's the final product, afer Meguiars Oxidation Remover, #45 Polish, and a coat of wax.
I'm pretty impressed!

She also got her new cockpit cover installed. I switched to a black cover for pure aesthetics, and it makes the boat look brand new!!




It was made by a one-man shop here in town called John's Marine Service. It took a while to get it done, but it's worth it. He designed the top to fit much better than the old vinyl one, added two poles in the rear for stability and rain runoff, and ran the top completely down to the fiberglass, instead of just to the windshield frame. Gives it a nice streamlined look. Total cost, $750.

Lesson Learned: If I need canvas work again, call outside of boating season. Prices are significantly cheaper, and according to John, "we're struggling for business in the fall". So I'll be calling him after this season about adding some snap-in carpet.

Holy....

After bringing the boat back from Lake Norris, I started cleaning the hull, not because of the water at Norris, but because of the Ohio River residue that was on there before the trip! I armed myself with some Hull Cleaner, two buckets & a few rags. I put some serious work into getting the river stains out, and when coming around the front of the hull, I looked and saw this.


So the investigation begins...
Closeup of deepest one.

So I thought about how this could possibly have happened, and I know it didn't happen at Lake Norris, there was no debris, and the boat was never taken into water more shallow than 15ft. I've come to the conclusion that the damage was by my harbor. I'm not holding them responsible, since I know I won't win, but I know they most likely did it. The damage looks perfectly spaced out for the fenders on the trailer, especially if coming at a sharp angle. The rule at the harbor is that if you're out past 9pm, you have to leave your boat tied up at the dock and they will load the boat back on the trailer at 9am the next morning. I've seen them do this many times before, and they "walk the boats" with the lines onto the trailer. I'm assuming this is how it could have happened, especially since they're usually in a hurry, and the lowest hole on the hull seems to have a black scuff from the bunk right in front of it, you can see it in the pics.

ANYWAY, so I did my research on the Trailer Boats Forum as to what kind of repair could be done, and I heard some great things about this product called "Marine-Tex Epoxy". It's a 2 oz 2-part epoxy that advertises it "handles like putty, stronger than steel, sands like wood". I figured this would work great. So I bought a kit, which was about $10. Not bad!


So I applied it on, here's the finished product.

Not the prettiest thing in the world until it's sanded, but I'm going to hit it with some low grit sandpaper and see where that gets me, and then polish and wax it back up once it cures. I'm going to give it a day to cure though. Watch here for an update.

Lake Norris 6/2 - 6/5

We've been planning on taking a trip to Lake Norris in Tennessee since January, and it finally came up on us after waiting patiently for 6 months. We arrived at Lake Norris on Saturday afternoon, after a few miles of winding back country roads which would scare even the most experienced trailer drivers. This is the house we stayed in.

We rented the house for 3 days, and it was a bargain! One of the main reasons we chose the house was for the private covered dock. Well, turns out my beam was just a hair too wide, and I didn't want to chance damaging the boat, so I docked it on the adjacent swimming platform. No biggie! My friend Joe brought his 16' Lockley Surprise sailboat with him. Here's a pic of mine on the dock, and his boat headed out into the lake.


Now I've been a river boater all of my life, so I had no idea what to expect for lake boating. The wakes are a little larger, and the wind definitely plays an impact too. However, after about 20 minutes alone with the boat, I was able to get a grasp for it, and I was ready to go. We tied up and headed inside for the night. Had one of those nice 10 minute lake storms, and then all was well.

The next morning I woke up, walked down to check on the boat, and this is the view.
Frickin' Gorgeous!

So we packed up the tubes, and the other 5 people, and headed out. I poured the throttle on to get up on plane, and then realized, WOW, what a difference adding passengers made. She wouldn't hardly plane at all until I had some extra weight in the bow. Finally got her planed, and backed off the throttle until about 2700 rpms, where she'd barely hold plane. We threw out the tube, and started tubing. This boat is nothing like my old 180 Sea Ray when it comes to tubing. This sucker throws out a wake like you wouldn't believe. Almost 2.5-3ft swells when coming off plane. I believe this was attributed to the large amount of weight in the stern.



Then it came time to take a couple sharp turns at the request of the tubers. This was a mistake. The weight was all misbalanced on the boat, and I had a couple close calls that scared the hell out of me. So the verdict is in, if I plan to tube with large amounts of people on board, I'm going to need trim tabs for the additional control.
We found a cove to anchor in, and all hopped out for some swimming & wading. The water there is beautiful, and is crystal clear. I could stand on the stern and see the blades on the prop. Amazing!

I took the boat out later that day and did some exploring. We headed down to see Norris Dam, which was about a 20 minute ride. We then decided to try and check out the wide section of the lake, to see how the sailing conditions were. Cruising along at about 30mph, (with only 4 on board), it was a smooth ride. The sky started clouding up the closer we got, and after a few raindrops, the women headed down into the cuddy for shelter. Joe & I stayed on deck, being the determined boaters. Here's the sky as we started to approach the storm.


It didn't get bad until the rain started hammering down on us. I tried to throttle through it, but the rain just was piercing our faces at any speed, and we decided to find a cove and anchor to wait it out. Joe & I headed into the cuddy to dry out. About 15 minutes later, the rain stopped, and we came out of the cuddy to face this. No color enhancement made, this is how beautiful everything was after the rain!


After gawking over how beautiful everything was, we turned around and headed back in. We went tubing two more times over the next couple days, and went sailing a few times as well.

I absolutely love this lake, and will be heading back again. I think we might head down again some weeekend and camp onboard, or rent a slip at one of the harbors. But if we're heading back with more than 4 people, i'm gonna need to have those trim tabs! Keep your eyes open here, there might be a writeup coming soon!