No fishin, but took the skiff out with my dad today just to test her out before my dad lets us loose. Weather was pretty bad. Paul of Harbor Tackle was actually pretty astonished that we were even going to charge it. Launched the boat at about 5:30pm after my dad got home from work and took her for a spin. Motor started right up and we were out of the harbor to meet lots of chop and 2-3ft. swells. The swell wasn't the bad part, it was all the chop. It was REALLY choppy. We ran out around the one mile buoy, and I was really happy with it. I had to back off a little bit in consideration of my dad's back :-) but she was takin the weather quite nicely. The boat rode very nicely and felt very safe. We were probably running at 20-25mph but like I said I could've had her higher than that. Despite the bow pitching up and down, and stuff, the motor was always in the water which was nice. We did hit a couple swells a little hard, and I expected the motor to go RRRREEEEE, you know the sound when the prop's out of the water... but it didn't. With a little more weight in the bow, we would've had no problem going 30mph or higher. Circled around the one mile buoy at about 25mph and she took it like a champ. No pitching to the side or anything, just right around, even in the chop. Very nice for a flat bottom. We headed up toward Leadbetter, going up swell and the boat took it quite nicely. We did get a little wet, but that was primarily from the wind blowing the bow spray. We backed off and sat in idle for a little bit and I stood up to see how stable it was in chop, and I definitely could've fished no problem. I was actually pretty surprised. Turned around and opened it up a little bit on the down swell. Probably got her close to 30mph for that stretch when we tucked in behind the break wall, just before the 5mph zone. With 3 guys in there, one in the bow and two on each side, I could see going 30+ on a flat day. Ok, things I didn't like- something definitely needs to be done about the tiller. Today I didn't have an extension, so I was just sitting on the storage box manually steering it by the shifter. It was kind of awkward and was a little tough to steer, so I really do need to at the very least get that extension for it so I can stand up and steer. The boat did smack the chop pretty good, but that's to be expected at 25mph in a flat bottom boat. It actually wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. The bow really cut through a lot of the chop when the bow was down. Let's see... I guess that's all I didn't like, not bad eh? Motor ran great, boat handled the weather great, and hopefully it'll fish great!!! First fishing trip will hopefully be sometime this weekend.
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