Getting ready for the season (aka Summerizing)

[Ronnie]

Spring is coming fast here in N Cal, low 70s today.

So I started up the boat for the first time in months and reinstalled the batteries and did the same to the waverunners.


A few lessons learned/relearned.
1. My boat's seat cushions were moldy. I will store them inside next year.


2. Don't carry gear I don't need or don't use (unless it's emergency/ safety gear).

3. Two strokes smoke a lot more than four strokes, especially when cold. Don't be surprised if some one calls the fire department.

It's time to do the spring cleaning thing on all the water toys, even broken down old blue. I may pay someone to detail the boat this year. I have to either fix or sell old blue as well. Good thing my mods list is short.

Do I own these possessions or do they own me?

 

[tdonoughue]

Oh, they own you... they own you.... Just buy lots of mods to keep them happy so they keep you happy.

 

[Nick Hughes]

Did you build your house or that fence around your boat? That looks tight, and I thought my 10 ft. wide spot was difficult to back into.

 

[Ronnie]

Unfortunately the house was not custom built for me. I have had the side yard paved and the gate was fabricated by my old neighbor, a welder by trade.
As such, tight storage parking is just something I've learned to live with over the past 10+ years.

Here is a link to my you tube video of "the usual" for me. Note: Things used to be tougher before I installed hitches to the front of each of my tow vehicles.

 

[Cobra Jet Steering LLC]

That is totally making the best of a bad situation

 

[Jluzader]

Sweet skills

 

[BobJohnson]

how wide is it between the house wall and the fence?

 

[BigN8]

That's crazy!

 

[Ronnie]

I think many people have seen the following thread already but here is a link to it for more details. I have Not taken a measurement of the side yard width in a long time but recall it tapers from 10' or 11' at the front and right around 8' at the rear. I measured the free space between the wall/fence and the top of the trailer guides after I made the video and found the combined measurement was 2.5", "plenty of room".

https://jetboaters.net/threads/my-post-boating-storage-routine.2949/

Back to the mods for the year, not too much to do but I'm still having problems finding the time to work on the boat and waverunners.

 

[Ronnie]

Got the bug today and purchased a bunch of cleaning supplies for the boat. Primarily, soft scrub with bleach for the cushions, simple green for the deck and 3m 1 step compound/wax. I also got some pads for the polisher I've had for over two years but have never used (yeah, this boat cleaning/detailing has been a long time in the making).

 

[Ronnie]

in the getting ready for this season context I noticed that the waverunner trailer needs new lights (in addition to a grounding issue someone in another car pointed out that one light was bragging by its electrical leads whole on the freeway doing 60+ mph). I ended up getting the same set I had.

 

[jfkraus]

Summerized the boat yesterday. New cleanout plug parts (now they drop right in), replaced the third bolt on my other oil cooler (the other one broke last summer), loosened the throttle tensioner a bit (they were very stiff), removed the "Twin Engine" and "High Outpout" stickers (ugly), lubed the intermediate bearing. Reinstalled the batteries and she started right up. Now I can't wait to get on the water!

 

[gthh]

Sweet skills

Yeah, how did you get your son to crank up the boat!

 

[Ronnie]

He actually volunteers to do it as he gets bored just standing there watching me do it all. I don't let him go in or play on his phone until everything from our day out together is put away.

 

[Ronnie]

So I finally got the boat washed and waxed last weekend. I tried to hire some labor at the local hardware store but they were not entertaining the $10 to $15 per hour I offered to pay them so I left scratching my head. Anyway, my son and I washed and dried the boat in a little over an hour. Waxing it took me alone three hours by hand and with the machine. I wasn't able to get some of the deeper/more visible scratches out but that is only because I wasn't willing to take sand paper to those spots as instructed in several youtube videos. The result is that the boat looks better than it has over the last several years but this year is the last year I will ever wax it personally. Next year I'm paying someone to detail the boat. Now that I've used the machine I bought years ago to wax the boat, it is off my "bucket list" and I will probably be throwing away or selling the machine soon.