THSCC Forums

For us, Tonya's main job is to keep the boy out of trouble, and then if she can, she'll manage the boat while I'm dealing with the truck. If someone wants to cry and moan about me taking an extra 5-10 minutes because of that, I'm happy to have "ruined" their day.

Chris (getting ahead of ourselves here), my suggestion for your first outing is to take a day off from work and send the kids to a babysitter. You and your wife head to the ramp and figure out a method that works for the two of you. Don't try to take it out on a weekend, for your first attempt. People will pressure you, you'll rush, and end up making a mistake.

As for marking up the boat. That's one of our main reasons for getting a cheaper boat. Keep it cheap and when you bang it into the dock or hit a hard part of the trailer, you won't worry about it so much.

Our boat has a relatively flat bottom and winching it on the trailer never gets it straight. I have to power it on to have any hopes of it sitting straight on the trailer. If there's a cross current, I don't even bother trying to get it straight.

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In need of car.

A great option (if money is of little concern) is a marina. I used to keep the 20' boat at the Falls Marina. It was great to just drive up, cover it and head out. But it does take practice getting into and out of your slip. Best to practice on your own. I remember the first time coming into the slip with 5 people all moving about...

I used to keep the 26' boat at kerr lake in the dry stack. Once you got used to seeing your boat bouncing down the ramp on the front of a fork lift, it was pretty nice. At the end of the day, bring it to the dock, tie it up and walk away. They put it away.

Those were the days before AX and now RR.

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Jim Pastorius
2008 Silverado VortecMax
1992 Camaro CMC#92
2002 BMW R1150R

2009 3rd Place CMC Mid-Atlantic Championship
2009 CMC Hyperfest Winner

thanks guys! i'm not so much worried about my abilities. at 16 i was taking my dad's four wins out to Falls every weekend with my friends (I still can't believe he let me do that).

here's my dad's boat now.



he doesn't let me back this one down the ramp

i'm mostly concerned with the vehicle's abilities. we'll only be doing short trips to Jordan with a couple of yearly trips to Kerr and Smith Mtn Lake. i'll look for an AL trailer...thx!!!

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05 MCS

I've had the unfortunate situation of having to often use a ramp that isn't quite steep ENOUGH. Okay, I don't HAVE to, but it's WAY closer than anything else to my house (within sight). But you simply can't get my deck boat far enough in the water to float it on and off. Power is REQUIRED. Sucks.

But all I need is one person to go with me who can drive the truck/trailer back OUT of the water and over to the house (and just pull in front of the house right off the street). Then I drive the boat over to my dock.

Yeah, I've got a floating boat lift with an awning over it on my dock, but you still gotta take the thing out for service and I *usually* take it out for the winter.


--Donnie

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My Blog

While we're talking about ramps I'll share a story...

Now I'm a novice boater but, dare I say, an expert trailer backer having done a lot of race car towing over the last 10 (!!) years. I was doing my thing putting in a few weeks ago, my 3rd time, a bit anxious. Saw two couples, prob in their 30's, trying to back down the ramp as I pulled up to put in. Wives were standing watching, man #1 was driving, and man #2 was shouting instructions. Women were bemused.

I easily got down the ramp (remember that expert part? At least there's one thing I can do well), put the boat in (I'm solo), tied it up with bumpers, and pulled out. Men were still trying to descend the ramp. One of the women yells out to me "Don't worry, we will still be here when you get back!!" as I was driving away to park the truck and trailer. I say back "If it makes you feel any better, I'm a novice too!!". Then I realize that, no, in fact it probably didn't make anyone feel better, but now I have a better chance of a date if I wanted to pursue it.

I park and come back and these 2 guys are *still* trying to figure out how to back down the ramp. I'm starting to LOL at this point. I actually stopped and told the ladies that I have been pulling race cars on a trailer (grunt grunt) for 10 years so that's the easy part for me, and that the hard part is about to begin when I try to pull off the dock.

Then one of the women gives me her phone number. No, just kidding, that's how the story ends in my ego-driven fantasy. Actually I motor off and spend all day working on my boat wishing I could hang out with my lovely family

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Mike Whitney
whit32@gmail.com, 919-454-5445
V10, V8, V8t, I6, I6, V6, F4t, I4, I4, I4, I4, I2, 1, 1

Just a note about towing with FWD ... And another ramp story. And again with women.

Last time out, there were 4 reasonably hot 20's girls trying to pull a 17' boat out with a FWD minivan. That's still a 2000 lb boat and probably up to 3k with trailer and stuff. I was actually kind of stunned to see a bunch of girls (if I dare say it) doing this with no knowledgeable dude-help around. (not saying what men and women can and cannot do but you gotta admit it's an unusual sight... maybe we can get into genetics discussions)

So while one girl is WOT with rubber burning trying to get it out of the water I ask another "you guys need some help?". "The tires keep spinning".

The girl driving backs off and I tell her the trick:

- LFB
- RF Throttle up to 1.5k
- LF slowly off brake
- RF slowly increase throttle

It worked. I think you can pull darn near anything out with FWD if you don't let the car roll backwards using LFB.

No I did not get any numbers

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Mike Whitney
whit32@gmail.com, 919-454-5445
V10, V8, V8t, I6, I6, V6, F4t, I4, I4, I4, I4, I2, 1, 1

reminds me of this: http://www.theonion.com/articles/ask-a- ... nto,12264/

I think I see the real reason Mike has gotten into boating. When you left the women both times were you tempted to say "Stay thirsty my friend"

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2002 MCS, 2003 MCS Track Rat, 2003 Generic White Yukon, 2003 BMWk1200rs, 1973 CB350F, 02 996. 08 Cayenne Turbo
http://www.clinehallagency.com

Sort of related...

A friend and myself used to go to Lask Gaston every weekend about 10 years ago so we decided to buy a Jet Ski together. Neither of us had really done much boating, but of course that didn't stop us from diving right into all of it.

At the time neither of us had a truck so we had hitches installed on our cars. Sure we all know a car can pull a Jet Ski, but keep in mind that I had a 1.6L (98hp) Mazda MX-3 at the time.

The first time down the boat ramp (resevior in Rocky Mount) was an adventure. I can back a trailer pretty well, so getting down the ramp wasn't an issue for me, and I'm not a girl. . Like Donnie's situation, the problem was the ramp wasn't really steep enough to float the craft off the trailer, and a single seat Jet Ski doesn't have reverse. In my infinite wisdom at the time (I promise I'm smarter now) I just kept backing until the tailpipe of my car was just below the surface and bubbling up water! Actually putting the craft in this way worked just fine because when I was ready to pull out, the trailer was empty. See where this is headed?

When it was time to load up and go home it was a different story. I had to back down the ramp the same amount with the tailpipe in the water again. I set the e-brake and stepped out while my buddy drove the Jet Ski on the trailer. When it was time to pull up I had about 600lbs? extra. Since the car was FWD, traction was an issue, and it was a 5-speed so LFB wasn't an option either. I didn't want to burn up the clutch or even worse, ask anyone for help. Luckily my buddy decided we could use the trust of the Jet Ski to help the car up the ramp and it worked!

Needless to say we NEVER went back to that particular ramp again. As matter of fact we never used our cars to get the Jet Ski in/out of the water again. We wised up and used his Dad's Chevy 4x4 from that point forward.

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Vincent Keene
'06 Ford Mustang GT (track rat)
'15 Dodge Charger R/T (yeah, it's got a HEMI!)
'07 Ford Fusion SE (205,000 miles and counting)
'98 Chevy Z-24 (retired)
'93 Acura Integra (Team SWB 24HOL Car)

Got it running great. Man is this a strong motor now that it's tuned well. Speedo shows 48 but GPS was indicating 50. I saw near 5k rpms today. From the factory the rated WOT RPM is 4200-4600, so I'm definitely getting the extra power out of the vortec heads, probably getting the full 190 HP. The thing comes out of the water like a cannon compared to how it did before. I even went conservative with the timing, could add another 5 degrees. But it's fast enough And it felt like I could run it like that all day, in fact I probably did a half-dozen 2-5 minute WOT runs over the afternoon. Stayed totally consistent, no backfires, no more bogging or hesitation.

I was still showing over 2 inhg on the manifold vacuum gauge that does indicate the carb is a limiting factor... Hmmm....

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Mike Whitney
whit32@gmail.com, 919-454-5445
V10, V8, V8t, I6, I6, V6, F4t, I4, I4, I4, I4, I2, 1, 1

Damn, dude, that is fast for a sub-$5k boat. Only thing I've owned faster was the Waverunners and my Sea-Doo jet boat. It's actually pretty fast for ANY leisure boat, particularly those powered by something not a V8. Nicely done.

I'm telling you, assuming the economy just recovers to reasonable levels, you can make money on that boat in a couple years after having a LOT of fun for very little money from here on out.

Plus, I firmly believe that the best way to sell a boat like yours is to offer and be willing to take potential buyers to the lake for a quick ride just to show them everything is golden on it. But you might not be doing that for quite some time...your family is at the perfect "age" to use that boat for a good many years, really.


--Donnie

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My Blog

Now all you have to do is find out if the prop pitch is what the factory recommended,because right now your under pitched. Prop pitch and wheel diameter will determine what your max rpm is. if you want greater acceleration add diameter, if you want higher top speed without over reving the engine add pitch. If the prop is factory spec you have in fact increased HP and can increase your speed. Under pitch on a prop is not a bad thing if you don't constantly over rev the engine. Over pitch however leads to problems, so make sure you have the boat loaded as you would when you normally use it before making any pitch changes.

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2004 C5(415whp,390ft/lbs),
1997C5,1997Trans Am, 1986 C4,
1990 Miata, 1976 MGB,1997 Protege, 1989 MR2

So, as we were leaving the ramp today, I noticed there was this one deck boat taking an extremely long time to set up. We floated in line with three boats in front of us, while these guy were getting ready.

When we got to the dock, they were spending most of their time setting up some kind of computer systems with what I assume was datalogging equipment.

I would've loved to go talk to them, but the ramp was way to busy to hold them up at all. Any ideas what kind of research they might've been doing? My first guess is that they were probably mapping the water depths?

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In need of car.

Bernie if you don't mind I'd like to pick your brain about this a little bit. Admittedly I'm having trouble wrapping my brain around this, and the bit of reading I have done leaves me a bit confused.

First of all, you say I'm under-pitched. Is this based on the fact that I'm over-revving the engine? I actually think that I may not be that far off. 4800 is a rated WOT rpm for these motors, and I have been reading that in auto applications these motors have a 5300 rpm redline and 5700 rpm cutoff.

So I guess I first need to decide what I want the max engine rpms to be at WOT, right? Then you basically pick a prop which will let the engine run at that speed at full throttle?

Let's say I want to run at 4800 RPM at WOT. Then I obviously need to do something to add load to them motor. If I could change a gear ratio I'd do that I was thinking that increasing diameter would add load to the motor, and probably increase top speed.

However, I read last night that increases in diameter doesn't affect speed? That it's all about pitch ?!? Doesn't make sense to me... push more water at the same RPM, same speed.

So I'm confused. It's a 14.5" by 19 pitch prop and this is the factory prop. I'm making probably 15-20 HP more than stock and am over-revving by about 200 rpm.

Thoughts?

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Mike Whitney
whit32@gmail.com, 919-454-5445
V10, V8, V8t, I6, I6, V6, F4t, I4, I4, I4, I4, I2, 1, 1

i know nothing about boats but bernie's statement makes sense. both larger diameter and added pitch move more water per revolution, the former is more efficient at low (boat) speeds (better acceleration) while the latter is more efficient at high speeds (faster top end). or at least that's how i envision things.