ScarabChris

Are you still in the house on PE?

Wow sad news, I have exchanged posts with him many ties.

I never knew these existed until I saw a banner ad here. It was like a bright light at the end of a tunnel because my boat has a cup holder problem. Its a great boat but came with zero cup holders and no place to really put them other than the suction cup type which I hate. I do have 3 nice stainless steel cup holders on the back of the lean post backrest. But three isn't enough on my boat as its used more for family/friend cruising and partying then fishing. I hooked up with Merritt Marine Supply to get the rod/cup holders. They had the best price and they were a great group of guys to deal with. While I was at Merritt I opened one of the rod holders. These things are nice! They weigh 3 times what the standard Lee's holders do that came out of the boat. They are super high polished all welded 316 welded stainless steel. The work is so good you can't even see the welds.. It looks like one solid piece. And every rod holder comes with a beer coolie....with the manufacture logo of course. I started taking pictures half way through the project. Here are the holes opened up... This is the difference in hole size from a regular Lee's holder. You are only removing a 1/4" around the existing hole. I don't see a major concern here. Installed, holding my ice water, its about 100 degrees today. And these cup holders will be in perfect arms reach when the rear seat is in place. This is my console. I don't want drinks on the top. They would be right in my line of sight. And you can't sink flush mount cup holders because of the plexi glass door that slides up under the top of the console. I fabricated this angle base for a flush mounted cup holder. There is only room for one and it is for the captains drink. I did put a Penn International rod with a Penn 30TW in one of the holders. It sets in there nice and solid. I can feel no difference between these and the original Lee's holders.

I'm not exactly sure why but its been a little while since I have checked in here. This was a fun thread to read to get back into the action.

There is theft everywhere so be proactive. I lock my boat to the dock and I put the big rods in the room. I leave the spinners on the boat and nobody touched them.

Friend emailed me this video today. Looks like fun except when......... http://saltyshores.com/wordpress/2010/05/14/video/hand-feeding-14-hammer-head-next-to-boat-video/

Damn you guys splashed that boat already? I was just there last week and there was still much work to do. How did it perform? Speed, MPG, ect? BTW....I like the single oil tank for all three engines with the oil level sender. Does BRP make one for a twin engine setup?

How do you feel about 4-strokes having to drain dirty hot oil into a bucket, changing out an oil filter, catching any drippage, pouring 5 to 8 quarts of oil at the top of the motor, then cleaning everything up and taking the old oil to a recycling center? With an E-TEC and the optional 3 gal. tank you don't have to do much, and you keep your hands clean. The best part it takes only a moment or two compared to a 4-stroke oil and filter change. Exactly! I'm always amazed of how people make adding oil sound like such an ordeal. Its so much quicker and easier than changing oil. Especially if you have multiple engines that you rack up a lot of hours on. Like myself. I have twin 250s and I add oil to the tanks once every month or two and it literally takes me less than two minutes and I'm done. And it can be done with the boat in the water. This may not be important to trailer boaters but it sure is for people like me that keep their boat in the water. I have over 1800 hours on my engines.

Didn't get enough with the last two trips so I'm going back August 27th.

Now we're talkin!

No mini season madness while we were there. Their season starts on August 1st (yesterday) and thats the day we left. Who knows what happened yesterday and today though. But lobster can be had, ya just have to know who to ask. Here on our streets you have drug dealers and pimps. Over there you have a few of those as well but you also have the "dealers" that can get you lobster tails and conch any time. We bought our lobsters. But we waited until their season opened and bought them the morning before we left. We just "reserved" them two days prior.

Got back from the Bimini Big Game yesterday. Well its looking like the place is coming back strong. It was packed there, not one empty slip or room. The place was looking good, the staff was very accommodating as usual which was a life saver for me since the Ft Lauderdale reservations office never sent my reservation to them so in their eyes I was showing up with no reservation. But they made it happen. I didn't get the cottage I requested but I got a cottage. No biggie. We had a great time. We went out Friday afternoon to get some Yellowtail, we did ok and got 7. They weren't very big but they were big enough to have a great meal. The upstairs restaurant prepared them for us Bahamian style which is whole fried. Saturday we headed out for some Mahi. The ocean was flat calm all weekend. My plan was to run out about 8 miles and troll unless we spotted something on the way out. We did spot some nice weed patches and in one weed patch was a big white piece of plastic, we could see the Mahi jumping out of the water on our approach. There was a school of about 8 very nice size schoolies. I would actually call them border line cows. We were working the fish all alone out there and had 5 in the box pretty quick. Then we see some boats heading towards us at full speed. One guy slowed and dropped a line to troll past the weed and nailed one I had lost twice and was trying to get. Oh well, no big deal as we had plenty of fish for the day. Now some pictures. This is a packed Marina at the BGC. Haven't seen this in years. You are seeing some empty slips but these were taken Saturday afternoon so a lot of people were still out. Hey Robbie!!! Rasing Cane, buddy of mine!!! Then on the way back Sunday we see multiple piles of what looked like Banana tree yard trash. We pulled one very nice Mahi out of this pile. Cruising back to Ft lauderdale at about 45 MPH. I wish every crossing could be like this. It made me not want to go home even though I was dead tired and hung over from drinking at Big Johns Saturday night. Sorry, no pictures of the actual fish but I'm sure everyone knows what Mahi looks like. LOL

Bikini patrol off Hollywood beach? Yeah you can spot some cuties out there. But if I were the skipper of that sub I would have been off South Beach. (Miami Beach)

Couldn't have said it better myself. I almost hope to catch one of these losers stealing my boat so I can make an example of them. I assure you there will be no tax payers money wasted on a trial and jail time.