After about 20 months of sitting on a cradle in a storage building, the Sea Ray made its 2021 debut.
It was launched on June 3 after many days of polishing and waxing.
I had a lot of help from a friend to bring the shine back to this 1997 boat. It did come out very nice after a couple weeks of work.
The marina guys had a laundry list of maintenance to take care of, including reconditioning the propellers.
With all the work done, the boat was launched and brought to the condo.
That's pretty sweet, having the boat at out the back door. Unfortunately, I found a slow leak through one of the mounting bolts for a grounding plate. So, the boat had to get hauled out and those bolts re-bedded.
The guys at CVM take care of me pretty well and got that job done the next day and I was back in business. The last time I looked, the bilge was 100% dry. That's a rarity in a boat. They always leak somewhere. At the moment, this one doesn't.
So, Kathy had a party planned and I wasn't invited. Therefore, I packed my PJ's and headed to Mackinaw City in my freshly launched ship. It was a foggy morning, but I found a window to make the 15 mile cruise to the city of "the bridge".
The lake doesn't get much nicer.
I found a nice cruise was at about 3200 rpm and close to 25 mph.
I did go full throttle for a brief period to see how well the reconditioned props would perform. It looked like the top end was about 4300 rpm and 38 mph. That's pretty quick for this size of boat. I could likely make 40 mph with less fuel and water on board. Those tanks were all full. 225 gallons of fuel and about 40 gallons of water. Of course that speed comes at a cost of somewhere around a gallon/minute of fuel burn.
Anyway, I arrived at the marina after a 30 minute cruise and settled in.
I'm out near the fuel dock in slip #71.
Yes, it's good to be back in the saddle.
No comments:
Post a Comment