4/6/15-Short, Sweet And A New Addition To The Fleet.

With limited time available this morning I set off  with just lures , aiming directly for one of our quieter reef marks.
A couple of nice bass, plenty of plucky wrasse and a brace of very big mackerel, a welcome sight, kept me entertained for the three hour trip before heading home for the afternoon 'mission'.

Dave and me have decided , between us, to put a boat on our favourite river in order to get the best of the available coarse fishing, in particular pike.
We've done a little bit of boat fishing before on the venue and with some success but, Its always been quite a 'work up' getting afloat as access is very limited and , being tidal,  launching a boat from a trailer proved to be quite a difficult and time consuming operation.
Dave did have a small aluminium boat but it rarely got used, for the above reasons, so was sold prior to a house move.
Having already secured a mooring, we needed a boat to park on it. so a trip around the M 25 to Dartford was undertaken to view a prospective candidate. In short, the package seemed ideal for our purpose so, a deal was struck, and a 'new' addition to the fleet was towed home that evening..
'Finatic' is a very old (early 1980s maybe), but sound 16ft Orkney Longliner (my third example of the marque) and it'll be pushed along by an equally ancient, but very sweet running 6 H.P Mariner 'two stroker'.

After giving it a 'going over', two days later, we launched Dave at the public slipway close to the river entrance and sent him on his long journey upstream with the tide, whilst I followed by road.
I'll admit to feeling quite relieved , and a little excited when I finally spied the boat arriving at the mooring a couple of hours later.
The only slight 'glitch' was that the engine cooling system malfunctioned causing some over heating and slight loss of power.  The little unit was easily lifted off the boat, which remained on its mooring, and taken home for closer inspection- a major advantage of running such a lightweight outboard.
With the gearbox removed-a five minute job, the water pump impeller was checked and found to be in excellent condition however, the waterways were blocked by some hardened debris obviously picked up from the river. Once the  system was cleared the engine once again ran sweetly, pumped water strongly and, kept its cool.
Its actually quite a joy working on an outboard engine like this one with its 'old's cool' technology . Modern boat motors are no doubt, very clean ,efficient machines but lack the simplicity and ease of repair of their predecessors with their  pre mix fuel, carburettors, CD ignition and smoky exhaust.
I wonder if the fuel injected, computer brained 100hp Suzuki on my Warrior will still be running in 2050!