Did someone say FISHIN'!

  Since I had gotten a bit away from the writing and other stuff associated with the local racing scene, I have found that I have a wee bit more free time to fill.  Filling that time has not been a problem.  However, the small change in my life has allowed me to enjoy my love of fishing just a little bit more.  One of the more enjoyable fishing deals that has come down the pike has been the Sunday morning drifts down the Delaware River in search of bass.  There is a small group of various guys that can make up the days crew.  In the past, I had always needed to borrow my brother Dave's boat for the fishing drift.  That entailed calling him up in the middle of the week to (1) see if he wasn't using it that weekend and (2) to set up a time for me to make the trip over to his house to pick it up.  THEN, I had to hope that the weather held up on the positive side for Sunday morning.

  That hassle got to be a real pain in the butt and I decided that it was time to try to find myself a used boat that I could use for our drifts down the Delaware and also for use for such things as fishing for herring during their annual Spring run in the river and for occasional fishing excursions to the area's larger resevoirs for a variety of fish species.  I had a limit as to how much I was willing to spend on a boat.  I know that I wanted an aluminum boat, 12 feet or larger and I definitely wanted it to come with a motor since I wanted to go through as little trouble as possible putting the entire package together.  I was in no hurry to buy the boat, figuring that if a deal was to come my way, it would come my way on it's own time schedule.  I looked at a boat here and there and they were either too much money or they were not exactly what I was looking for or they were in tough shape.

  Late last August, I was taking my morning break at work with a co-worker and he knew that I was eventually going to be in the market for a pool table (see below).  He noticed a used pool table in the classified ads and mentioned it to me.  I turned to the page and looked it over, but I also noticed that there was an ad for a used 14' aluminum boat just below it.  The price was right and it had a motor, trailer and a number of other ammenities that seemed like a great bargain!  I called the number and it turned out that it was pretty much on my way home and it was still available.  My juices got flowing.  I stopped on the way home and lo and behold, for $500, this deal was a true bargain.  A trailer that was in great shape, a 14' boat with lots of room for three fishermen, a 7 1/2 hp motor that turned out to be in fine running shape, oars, seat cushions, life jackets.  It just needed a little cleaning up.  And clean it up I did.  I'm just getting finished up with everything that I needed to do to spruce it up and the results are below.

   I started with the trailer.  I decided to re-wire the thing and that was a wise move.  It was a simple task and the wiring harness was very inexpensive.  Before re-wiring, I cleaned off the minimal rust that was on the trailer and primed and painted it.  That made a big difference right there.  With the wiring done, I put new wheel bearings in and it definitely needed those.  I recarpeted the rear boat supports, added a new front manual winch and a new coupler and the trailer was pretty much done.

   The boat was next and I removed the old registration numbers and boat name from the previous owner and gave it a quick once-over with my random orbit sander to rough up the old surface in preparation for a painting.  But first, I took the time to seal all of the aluminum seams with an epoxy.  A coat of "aluminum" paint on the entire bottom and once dry, it was flipped over to work on the interior of the boat.  For the most part, that consisted of shoring up the three seats here and there since the bolts that were holding them in were rusted out here and there.  A few "L" brackets here and there also came in handy for firming up the seats.  I added a left over tie down loop from a truck bed liner to the front of the boat to allow for strapping down the boat once it's on the trailer.  For maintaining the oars in the boat and not having them shuffling around in the boat, I fabricated up some brackets out of some copper tubing that the oar lock brackets fit right down into and they worked great as the oars now sit firmly in place and do not move around.

  Getting the boat registered was a bit of a hassle since the boat did not have a true hull number.  This is similar to a cars V.I.N. or Vehicle Identification Number.  With boats, it the H.I.N. or Hull Identification Number.  Because it had no number anywhere on the boat (actually there is a plate on the inside of the transom that is so old that it is now illegible) I had to go through some additional trouble to get it issued a new number.  That meant trailering it to Burlington,NJ to a NJ State Police Marine unit for inspection.  They issued me papers that I returned to motor vehicles with where I finally got everything needed to get registration numbers and my boaters license.

  As I sit here typing, I can't help but wish that the next few weeks fly by as within a month, I hope to be on the river enjoying my first bass float.  Oh yeah, did you notice the name of the boat?  It's on the side of the boat in the back.  The letters are MYOTT.  Sound it out.  (My Yacht) hehe