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Eew. Just EEEWWW. That could make a boat trip interesting. Yeah?
Well since you asked about my plumbing while in the boat there were some happenings going on there. No I didn't shat my pants but there was a plumbing defect involving my ability to affectively caulk every GD hole by the transducer....
I plead the 5th but I am guilty of not finishing the job correctly. No the FV:BLOODY DECKS did not ascend to Davey Jones locker as @Thomas_Gunne was a very effective bailer, that guys got skills!!! :D:D:D
That is a story for another time though...
 
Well since you asked about my plumbing while in the boat there were some happenings going on there. No I didn't shat my pants but there was a plumbing defect involving my ability to affectively caulk every GD hole by the transducer....
I plead the 5th but I am guilty of not finishing the job correctly. No the FV:BLOODY DECKS did not ascend to Davey Jones locker as @Thomas_Gunne was a very effective bailer, that guys got skills!!! :D:D:D
That is a story for another time though...

Geezus! You mention gastric issues in an above post and you bringing up shat then "Plumbing" and "Calk" ! :eek: That would give new twist to the "Gut shot ape walk"
 
All in all today's adventures worked out, no one got wet or lost any digits. We steadily caught some very nice fish up to 15" and no dinks this trip!!!:s0115: We did loose 3 fish so there was our limits...

The Diawa Lexa reels worked great, very smooth, the drags are like silk and super fast retrieve (almost warp speed)... :D

The Lowrance Hook 7 TDI on the other hand proved more technically advanced that ole Cavemanis, UGHHH, there was no dang paper instructions with it!!!
We flew blind in the same area we routinely pick up limits so it's nice to know that I really don't need all that fancy schmancy technology l...:p

Remember folks, It's never a trip but always an adventure. :s0108:

@Thomas_Gunne went home with 4 of these brutes, just one is a meal.
5CFD57BE-CD6C-453D-A75A-4D57F0B87CD5.jpeg 1802D075-11FF-40B5-8756-B7942CE617F5.jpeg
 
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Waiting to see some fresh Kokanee pics! Also hoping for a Riffe Lake trip in June. Will they still be biting?
Technically there are no Kokanee in Riffe Lake, they are landlocked Coho and Triploid rainbows.
They are on the bite all the time but sometimes they make you try different locations and scented shoe peg corn... We knocked em dead with Bloody Tuna scent today.
I am 95% sure that June 15th will work out for you and your wife, the garage sale got pushed back yet again. Lol
 
Well since you asked about my plumbing while in the boat there were some happenings going on there. No I didn't shat my pants but there was a plumbing defect involving my ability to affectively caulk every GD hole by the transducer....
I plead the 5th but I am guilty of not finishing the job correctly. No the FV:BLOODY DECKS did not ascend to Davey Jones locker as @Thomas_Gunne was a very effective bailer, that guys got skills!!! :D:D:D
That is a story for another time though...
lmao!!! Oh boy that was another excellent unboring fishing expedition. The fish were jumping in the boat and everything was coming up roses until caveman says "we're taking on water". Wtf did he just say? I thought to myself. And by golly the bubblegum end of the boat was pretty fricken close to the water. But that's what bilge pumps are for I chuckled to myself. Then I thought I heard Caveman say the bilge pump isn't working. Well, he did say that, and bubblegum suddenly got real!!! So I'm bailing and netting fish as fast as Caveman was reeling them in. We managed to get 7 big fat fish before we both sobered up and realized that it was a long swim back to the dock so I'm bailing my bubblgum off and he's driving. I'm still laughing... Thanks for another fun day, buddy!! I'm expecting Somali pirates next trip out, lol.... :s0071: :s0003:
 
Boy Howdy, nothing common on the Bloody Deck except bloody decks, right... Good to have you back aboard brother. ;)

I don't know how it is in your boat, but my boat, 17.5' Smokercraft windshield boat, has an 8" diameter hole to get your hand in and unlatch that pump cartridge. It wasn't easy last time I had to do it. I always check the pump runs before getting under way.
 
David Wright, I forget his handle (starts with an A, boy I'm brain dead), put a Hook 7 in his sled for Koke fishing, But we never got to go before he passed. When I met David and his wife and brother's family on Brownlee, he had bozoed the electrical wiring and couldn't get the thing to work. Turned out later that he had tapped into a very small wire that couldn't provide enough juice to run the damn thing. And his wife is an engineer. Had to laugh.
 
I don't know how it is in your boat, but my boat, 17.5' Smokercraft windshield boat, has an 8" diameter hole to get your hand in and unlatch that pump cartridge. It wasn't easy last time I had to do it. I always check the pump runs before getting under way.
Yeah it's complacency that everything is expected to work when needed. I've had three boats and I never had any problem with the bilge pumps at all, they always worked.
I'll be adding that check whenever I make sure the plug is in before launching from now on.
 
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I'll be adding that check whenever I make sure the plug is in before launching from now on.
Long (but pretty funny) story...

Several months after my divorce about 10 years ago I was on a first date, we'll just call her Mary Jo, who owns a McGregor 26 sailboat. I was kinda "meh" about this date, but she was out to impress me, so she was gonna take me sailing around Bainbridge Island, departing out of the Brownsville Marina. Since this was "her" date, I was going to let her do whatever it was she was gonna do - she was "in charge" of the date. After she arrived very late at our pre-arranged meeting location, we proceeded to the marina. The fun was about to ensue unabated...

I don't know how many times she backed down the launch and pulled back up again to get lined up, but it was least a dozen times. I learned later that it was one or two of her boys who typically would launch the boat for her. She would show up at the dock after they launched and moored it for her, then she would just get on board and leave from there. Anyway, after she finally got the boat in the water, and I was standing there holding the line while she went and parked the truck, I noticed that a crowd was gathering on the outdoor deck above the launches. I also noticed that the boat had taken on a decided list to starboard...

She came back from parking the truck, and also noticed the gathering crowd and the listing craft. She told me that it was probably just a little extra water left in the ballast tanks that the boys failed to drain when they put the boat on the trailer for this trip. I pointed out, helpfully I might add, that it seemed to be taking on a steeper list than when she had first put it in the water. I was dismissively corrected that I was mistaken in my observation, so being the good first date that I was, I decided not to offer much commentary from this point forward...

We got in, I pushed us off, and she went to fire up the iron sail. Needless to say, it failed to start readily, and we began drifting into a line of moored boats. I decided that rather than let us mow down a row of spendy vessels, that I would fend us off with my foot, successfully, I might add. About this time, MJ got the motor running, and she engaged it in reverse to avoid the line of other boats. As we began to slow our forward progress and started to reverse course, the mooring lines which MJ had failed to stow managed to fall overboard. As you might imagine, it was a split second before the lines were sucked into the prop and stalled the engine. Did I mention that we were in reverse? As we drifted to the back shore of the marina, MJ frantically tried to untangle the lines, while I watched with muted amusement. I knew from experience that there was no way she was going to get those lines out of the prop from *inside* the boat. I race 37-footers with friends, and I have seen this scenario play out many times before in many marinas.

We ground into the mud at the far shore of the marina, dead in the water, listing heavily. By now the crowd on the deck watching this performance had grown to a couple dozen souls. I grabbed a paddle from stowage and began to lever us off the bottom while MJ hopped out and untangled the lines from the prop. Freed from both the grip of the mud and the mooring lines, she hopped back in and fired up the motor again. At this point, I decided to throw caution to the wind and suggested that before we start moving again, perhaps we should figure out why the craft is listing so badly. Dismissively rebuffed again, telling me that once we get out of the marina and get going, the movement of the boat through the water will cause the bilge to drain on its own. I am quite familiar with this tactic (both from sailboat racing and waterskiing), but it requires no small amount of speed to accomplish this. She dropped the iron sail into gear, and we began to move forward...

As we began to move across the marina, the motor died again, this time all on its own. Frantically, MJ tried to regain power, but it was not to be. Powerless, listing, and with little to no rudder control, we drifted at a fairly good clip toward a different group of expensive watercraft. Abandoning all sense of shut-upedness, I suggested strongly that we steer as hard as we can to an empty slip slightly to starboard of our path. Since we were already listing heavily in that direction, I thought it was the best course of action, rather than try to fight the list by bearing to port. In the nick of time, we missed the other vessels, steered into the empty slip (the only one there that day) and arrested our momentum by crashing headlong into the dock.

Did I mention the crowd? Did I mention the listing? By now, the crowd watching our escapades had grown to about 50 people, all laughing their collective azzes off at our misadventures. I cannot even begin to fathom how embarrassed Mary Jo must have been at that point, but I surely knew well enough not to say a damned word. After crashing to a stop in the slip, our immediate attention now turned to bailing. Tons of water was sloshing around below deck, and we were actually sinking. MJ went below, rummaged around for a bilge pump (a manual one - sailboats this size don't have motorized pumps), and threw it up to me, where I began frantically pumping water overboard at the slip. Seconds later, a string of the most vile and horrific obscenities, directed at her absent offspring, emanated from the salon. Turns out that her sons had not only neglected to drain the ballast tanks, but they also forgot to put the plug back in the hull's drain hole. Without MJ checking to see that the drain plug was in, we had been taking on water as soon as we had put the boat in the water!

At this point, the harbormaster was spurred into action, probably because he didn't want a sunken sailboat stuck at his marina. He and an assistant hurriedly arrived with a pump and some hose, they hooked up the pump to shore power, handed me the business end of the hose, and I went to work draining the boat. MJ tied us up at the slip, then sheepishly went up to the boathouse to make amends to the harbormaster and pay the rent for the slip. The mocking applause she received from the assembled crowd still rings in my ears to this day. How she suffered that walk of shame up to and back from the boathouse, I will never know. I think I would've jumped overboard and just drowned myself rather than face those disapproving glares and the malicious standing ovation of the audience.

Mary Jo returned not long afterward, humbled by the day's misadventures, with a 6-pack of some really good local craft brew, and informed me that at least the sailing part of the date was over. "That's it! All sailing is DONE for the day!" she loudly announced, to roars of laughing approval from the assembled patio deck crowd. She handed me a bottle of the elixir, popped the tops off both our beers, and settled onto the cushions in the back of the boat. We clinked, hoisted a few, and then I produced the snacks I had brought for our sailing excursion that never left the marina. We spent the rest of that day into long after dusk lounging on her boat, talking; eating Italian deli meats, fancy cheeses, and artisan crackers; and polishing off a bottle of some really great Italian red wine. It was a nice, if not certainly memorable, first date...

Full disclosure:
I think if I had not initiated a second date, I never would have heard from Mary Jo again after that fateful day. However, I was sufficiently impressed with her hutzpah and her handling of the event to ask her out. Our second date was really nice and we continued to enjoy each other's company for a few more weeks. Then, MJ wanted to make good on the promise of our first date and take me sailing again (well, for the first time, really...). This time, we took a dinghy out to where her sons had moored the McGregor in Dyes Inlet off Tracyton (near Silverdale), so no launching shenanigans were to be had this time and it was clear that the drain plug was where it should be. We were going to dinner at a boater's restaurant known as the Boat Shed, barely under the Manette Bridge in Bremerton, at the very outlet of Dyes Inlet into Rich Passage, just opposite the Bremerton ferry dock.

As we sailed toward the dock at the Boat Shed, MJ informed me that she was going to dock the boat under sail (that is, she would not be using the motor to approach the dock and with sails lowered, as most sane people would). Docking under sail is an advanced maneuver that, having seen her "skill" at the helm just a few scant weeks before, left me understandably apprehensive. At her pronouncement, the self-preserving thought of jumping overboard quickly sped through my mind, but I remained onboard. I prepared myself, knowing my role, having performed this same maneuver after races several times. Upon MJ's command, my job was to, in rapid succession, drop the main sail, move to the foredeck and drop the jib, then leap to the dock with the mooring line, arrest our forward momentum, and tie up the boat. MJ's job, as captain of the vessel, was to time all of this perfectly, and also to place the boat in close enough proximity to the dock, with sufficiently slowed forward speed, to allow me to do my job. And you only get one shot at this...

We rounded the bridge pier and approached the dock at a pretty good clip as she steered us perfectly into position and at the last moment, called the command. I leapt into action, intent on nothing more than discharging my assigned duties expediently, hoping and praying that MJ didn't bash us broadside into the dock and sink us, nor leave us too far away from the dock for me to leap off the boat and tie us up. Much to my stupefied amazement, Mary Jo executed the difficult maneuver flawlessly. From the main channel, she turned our boat to port and bore down on the dock, then at the last moment, she spun it hard to starboard. As I dropped the sails, the boat pivoted on a dime on its stern, we lined up perfectly parallel to the dock, and our forward speed vanished to near-zero in the wash from the turn. The last of our momentum carried us sideways to within a few inches of the dock, whereupon I deftly stepped out onto it, highly reminiscent of that scene in the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie when the audience is first introduced to Captain Jack Sparrow (where Sparrow walks off the rapidly sinking skiff as he strides uninterrupted onto the dock). I casually looped the lines over the mooring cleats and tied them off, MJ having completed a flawless docking under sail, like a boss.

As we strode up the dock and climbed the stairs up to the restaurant, the cheers and applause that erupted from the diners on the Boat Shed's outdoor deck seemed to erase all of the embarrassment and shame that MJ had suffered so miserably at the Brownsville Marina just a few weeks earlier. People turned to me and congratulated me upon the splendid docking, to which I countered, motioning towards Mary Jo, that it was she who was in command of the vessel and was responsible for the poetry in motion they all had just witnessed, and I was just the deckhand carrying out the captain's orders. Her effervescent smile, beaming across her face from ear to ear, I will never forget...

For the edification of those that have never seen nor participated in a docking under sail, if I didn't describe it clearly enough, it looks a lot like this:

 
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Thanks for the story, I was seeing it play out as I read it...

My friend and I had just pulled my sled out of the Chehalis River one winter morning after killing our limits of ducks. We stood above the launch and watched a guy launching his windshield boat solo, he did well and parked his boat and trailer, stopped by the poop shack and returned to see water flowing into the back because he had forgot to make sure the plug was put in...
He is still an acquaintance that we fish with a few times a year. We named him Shipwreck Jon :p
 
Long (but pretty funny) story...

Several months after my divorce about 10 years ago I was on a first date, we'll just call her Mary Jo, who owns a McGregor 26 sailboat. I was kinda "meh" about this date, but she was out to impress me, so she was gonna take me sailing around Bainbridge Island, departing out of the Brownsville Marina. Since this was "her" date, I was going to let her do whatever it was she was gonna do - she was "in charge" of the date. After she arrived very late at our pre-arranged meeting location, we proceeded to the marina. The fun was about to ensue unabated...

I don't know how many times she backed down the launch and pulled back up again to get lined up, but it was least a dozen times. I learned later that it was one or two of her boys who typically would launch the boat for her. She would show up at the dock after they launched and moored it for her, then she would just get on board and leave from there. Anyway, after she finally got the boat in the water, and I was standing there holding the line while she went and parked the truck, I noticed that a crowd was gathering on the outdoor deck above the launches. I also noticed that the boat had taken on a decided list to starboard...

She came back from parking the truck, and also noticed the gathering crowd and the listing craft. She told me that it was probably just a little extra water left in the ballast tanks that the boys failed to drain when they put the boat on the trailer for this trip. I pointed out, helpfully I might add, that it seemed to be taking on a steeper list than when she had first put it in the water. I was dismissively corrected that I was mistaken in my observation, so being the good first date that I was, I decided not to offer much commentary from this point forward...

We got in, I pushed us off, and she went to fire up the iron sail. Needless to say, it failed to start readily, and we began drifting into a line of moored boats. I decided that rather than let us mow down a row of spendy vessels, that I would fend us off with my foot, successfully, I might add. About this time, MJ got the motor running, and she engaged it in reverse to avoid the line of other boats. As we began to slow our forward progress and started to reverse course, the mooring lines which MJ had failed to stow managed to fall overboard. As you might imagine, it was a split second before the lines were sucked into the prop and stalled the engine. Did I mention that we were in reverse? As we drifted to the back shore of the marina, MJ frantically tried to untangle the lines, while I watched with muted amusement. I knew from experience that there was no way she was going to get those lines out of the prop from *inside* the boat. I race 37-footers with friends, and I have seen this scenario play out many times before in many marinas.

We ground into the mud at the far shore of the marina, dead in the water, listing heavily. By now the crowd on the deck watching this performance had grown to a couple dozen souls. I grabbed a paddle from stowage and began to lever us off the bottom while MJ hopped out and untangled the lines from the prop. Freed from both the grip of the mud and the mooring lines, she hopped back in and fired up the motor again. At this point, I decided to throw caution to the wind and suggested that before we start moving again, perhaps we should figure out why the craft is listing so badly. Dismissively rebuffed again, telling me that once we get out of the marina and get going, the movement of the boat through the water will cause the bilge to drain on its own. I am quite familiar with this tactic (both from sailboat racing and waterskiing), but it requires no small amount of speed to accomplish this. She dropped the iron sail into gear, and we began to move forward...

As we began to move across the marina, the motor died again, this time all on its own. Frantically, MJ tried to regain power, but it was not to be. Powerless, listing, and with little to no rudder control, we drifted at a fairly good clip toward a different group of expensive watercraft. Abandoning all sense of shut-upedness, I suggested strongly that we steer as hard as we can to an empty slip slightly to starboard of our path. Since we were already listing heavily in that direction, I thought it was the best course of action, rather than try to fight the list by bearing to port. In the nick of time, we missed the other vessels, steered into the empty slip (the only one there that day) and arrested our momentum by crashing headlong into the dock.

Did I mention the crowd? Did I mention the listing? By now, the crowd watching our escapades had grown to about 50 people, all laughing their collective azzes off at our misadventures. I cannot even begin to fathom how embarrassed Mary Jo must have been at that point, but I surely knew well enough not to say a damned word. After crashing to a stop in the slip, our immediate attention now turned to bailing. Tons of water was sloshing around below deck, and we were actually sinking. MJ went below, rummaged around for a bilge pump (a manual one - sailboats this size don't have motorized pumps), and threw it up to me, where I began frantically pumping water overboard at the slip. Seconds later, a string of the most vile and horrific obscenities, directed at her absent offspring, emanated from the salon. Turns out that her sons had not only neglected to drain the ballast tanks, but they also forgot to put the plug back in the hull's drain hole. Without MJ checking to see that the drain plug was in, we had been taking on water as soon as we had put the boat in the water!

At this point, the harbormaster was spurred into action, probably because he didn't want a sunken sailboat stuck at his marina. He and an assistant hurriedly arrived with a pump and some hose, they hooked up the pump to shore power, handed me the business end of the hose, and I went to work draining the boat. MJ tied us up at the slip, then sheepishly went up to the boathouse to make amends to the harbormaster and pay the rent for the slip. The mocking applause she received from the assembled crowd still rings in my ears to this day. How she suffered that walk of shame up to and back from the boathouse, I will never know. I think I would've jumped overboard and just drowned myself rather than face those disapproving eyes and the malicious standing ovation of the audience.

Mary Jo returned not long afterward, humbled by the day's misadventures, with a 6-pack of some really good local craft brew, and informed me that at least the sailing part of the date was over. "That's it! All sailing is DONE for the day!" she loudly announced, to roars of laughing approval from the assembled patio deck crowd. She handed me a bottle of the elixir, popped the tops off both our beers, and settled onto the cushions in the back of the boat. We clinked, hoisted a few, and then I produced what I had brought for our journey that never left the marina. We spent the rest of that day into long after dusk lounging on her boat, talking; eating Italian deli meats, fancy cheeses, and artisan crackers; and polishing off a bottle of some really great Italian red wine. It was a nice, if not certainly memorable, first date...

Full disclosure:
I think if I had not initiated a second date, I never would have heard from Mary Jo again after that fateful day. However, I was sufficiently impressed with her hutzpah and her handling of the event to ask her out. Our second date was really nice and we continued to enjoy each other's company for a few more weeks. Then, MJ wanted to make good on the promise of our first date and take me sailing again (well, for the first time, really...). This time, we took a dinghy out to where her sons had moored the McGregor in Dyes Inlet off Tracyton (near Silverdale), so no launching shenanigans were to be had this time. We were going to dinner at a boater's restaurant known as the Boat Shed, barely under the Manette Bridge in Bremerton, at the very outlet of Dyes Inlet into Rich Passage, just opposite the Bremerton ferry dock.

As we sailed toward the dock at the Boat Shed, MJ informed me that she was going to dock the boat under sail (that is, she would not be using the motor to approach the dock and with sails lowered, as most sane people would). Docking under sail is an advanced maneuver that, having seen her "skill" at the helm just a few scant weeks before, left me understandably apprehensive. At her pronouncement, the self-preserving thought of jumping overboard quickly sped through my mind, but I remained onboard. I prepared myself, knowing my role, having performed this same maneuver after races several times. Upon MJ's command, my job was to, in rapid succession, drop the main sail, move to the foredeck and drop the jib, then leap to the dock with the mooring line, arrest our forward momentum, and tie up the boat. MJ's job, as captain of the vessel, was to time all of this perfectly, and also to place the boat in close enough proximity to the dock, with sufficiently slowed forward speed, to allow me to do my job. And you only get one shot at this...

We rounded the bridge pier and approached the dock at a pretty good clip as she steered us perfectly into position and at the last moment, called the command. I leapt into action, intent on nothing more than discharging my assigned duties expediently. Mary Jo executed the maneuver flawlessly. From the waterway, she turned our boat to port and bore down on the dock, then at the last moment, she spun it hard to starboard. The boat pivoted on a dime on its stern, we lined up perfectly parallel to the dock, and our forward speed vanished to near-zero in the wash from the turn. The last of our momentum carried us to within a few inches of the dock, whereupon I deftly stepped out onto it, highly reminiscent of that scene in the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie when the audience is first introduced to Captain Jack Sparrow (where Jack Sparrow walks off the rapidly sinking skiff as he strides uninterrupted onto the dock). I casually looped the lines over the mooring cleats and tied them off, MJ having completed a flawlessly executed docking under sail.

As we strode up the dock and climbed the stairs up to the restaurant, the cheers that erupted from the diners on the Boat Shed's outdoor deck erased all of the embarrassment and shame that MJ had suffered so miserably at the Brownsville Marina just a few weeks earlier. People turned to me and congratulated me upon the docking, to which I countered, motioning to Mary Jo, that it was she who was in command of the vessel, and I was just the deckhand carrying out the captain's orders. Her effervescent smile, beaming across her face from ear to ear, I will never forget...

For the edification of those that have never seen nor participated in a docking under sail, if I didn't describe it clearly enough, it looks a lot like this:
Oh so you Shanghai drifted it, Why didn't you just say so. ;)
That is rich...
Thanks for that.
 
Thanks for the story, I was seeing it play out as I read it...

My friend and I had just pulled my sled out of the Chehalis River one winter morning after killing our limits of ducks. We stood above the launch and watched a guy launching his windshield boat solo, he did well and parked his boat and trailer, stopped by the poop shack and returned to see water flowing into the back because he had forgot to make sure the plug was put in...
He is still an acquaintance that we fish with a few times a year. We named him Shipwreck Jon :p
You know what they say...There are those that have and those that WILL, forget the plug. I don't poo-poo that, but in 20 years, I haven't. Mainly because I don't take my plug OUT! It's a boat, water on the outside, dry on the inside.
 
Back in the late 80s, two years after I caught my first steelhead my wife bought me a drift boat for my birthday. I loved that boat, I got a report that there was really good steelhead fishing on the Skykomish that week so I was eager to launch and yes I did forget to put the plug in. But drift boats are way more forgiving than aluminum boats as far as dragging them up on a gravel bar to bail... :p :p:p
 

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