It was a great weekend....

[nofearengineer]

It was a good weekend, and I didn't even catch any bass.

Actually, I caught a huge bluegill, and a dink crappie, while watching my fishing buddy Mark catch a couple nice fat bass out of the local pond.




The bluegill I caught was a ten-incher, but I didn't get a photo due to:

a) he was bad hooked and spent too much time trying to not kill him
b) you guys would laugh if I posted a pic of a bluegill

The funny thing was, when I was trying to unhook him, the minnow I had on was still on the hook, so I just slid it up on the line to get it out of the way. Behind that minow, I found the minnow this guy had just stolen from me about 5 minutes earlier...and it was still alive....amazing. I pulled that one out of his mouth to get to the hook, and finally disengaged it, and wouldn't you know it, a third minnow pops out of this bluegill. Talk about a greedy little S.O.B.

After the fun of fishing a couple of hours in shorts (it hit 52....not really shorts weather, but hell, I did it on principle alone), I headed over to my buddy Jacob's house to finish the uprights for my rod locker dividers. Jacob is a great Architect, but may be an even more amazing woodworker. He builds and sells all kind of guitars, completely hand-built in his shop. So it was nothing for him to help me build my dividers, which I had drawn up in CAD that morning. We glued them on to some plywood and cut them out.



Jacob totally put the finesse on my design, and rolled over all the edges on the holes. I got them home, and test-fit them. Not bad at all! A few minor little trims left to do, and they will be perfect. I discovered while drawing them up, I could leave a large opening on the bottom of the rear divider, which will allow me to still put some odd-sized items in the bottom of the locker if I need to.




I'm still working on the cushioning for the rear holes, but the golf club tubes I have fit the front holes perfectly. I still need to get the tubing for the three spinning rod holes (the large holes)

I put a couple rods in to test the workability....



Looks great. It's one thing to draw the holes what looks like the right distance apart on paper, and another thing entirely to see they do indeed give just enough room to keep reels from smacking into each other, yet not waste too much space. I can now hold 7 casting rods and 3 spinning rods (big coincidence...that's exactly the number I take fishing with me ) in the locker, with no hassles at all.

I just need some foam inserts to put in the back holes to keep from scratching up my split grips and to more snugly hold the butts. M initial plan of using weather-stripping was terrible...it doesn't stick well enough...and it's just not dense enough. Oh well, something else to obsess over until I solve it.

After I had taken my rod lockers as far as I could, I focused on getting my new electronics installed. I took the backing plates I made at Jacobs's place, used them as bolt hole templates, and nervously drilled the first hole in my baby. A gut wrenching hour later, I had everything drilled, and started bolting everything into place. It was very satisfying to see my vision come to life.

The world looks pretty good through my eyes right now.



I also got my Smartcraft MercMonitor (the green face gauge) and the battery charger monitor (little football shaped thing) installed.

Looking under the console, you can see the 1" plywood backing plate I made for the RAM mount. It is partially hidden by the spaghetti mess that is the back of my dash right now, but you can see the huge steel nuts and bolts holding it all together. It is built like a tank.



I still need to run all of the cabling from the console to the back of the boat. I managed to get a fish tape through the back corner of the boat, but had to hang it up for the night due to company. A project for next weekend. If I'm lucky, I should be able to finish everything up then.

Let's hope my next weekend is even more fun.