Picture progression of the transformation of the Central Illinois Rough Fish Unit (CIRFCU). First old pictures of the the CIRFCU. Taking it apart. All the railings and whatnot off. Taking off the deck.
Base of stand: Working on fan shroud: Machining the fan swiveling doodad thingamabob. Look at all those baby slinkies!
Fan stand as it will sit on the boat. Pulleys mostly in place. Da Motor Motor on stand Shroud on motor on stand. Prop going on/in shroud on motor on stand. :D
So we spent the rest of the day trying to put the deck together. The idea is not just to get up above the water but also to have a spot to store stuff. Something that the flat deck of a pontoon boat does not offer. So... the deck is quite enormous. Having storage area and better fish spotting ability means added weight and wind catching area. We'll see how the trade-off goes.
We're waiting on 26 foot of throttle cable now. (add this to 'things you can't just pick up at the local store' list) Here's one lonely light on:
...as much as I can get by with. There have been a few things I had to have made by weld shops have been, well, ...sometimes dissapointing. Nothing major though, just not the quality work I would like.
We got it on the water today! The fan had some steering issues right off the bat.. slippage in the stick and then finally the cables coming undone. A touch of welding and recabling should take care of that. At full throttle it was pushing us about 5 mph. At idle it was just about the same as our 80 lb. troller would pull us. We ran over a lot of brush and sticks in the water with ease. Kendall took the boat right into the trees which was perhaps a little too brave as the steering slippage and learning curve didn't make steering all that easy. (mostly because we had to keep looking at the fan to see which way it was pointed) K did manage to avoid all the branches but we did hold our breath a few times. :D When the cable collar came off we had to use the outboard to putt-putt our way out of the shallow stuff. The fish were far more scared of the outboard at idle speed than the fan at full blast. Overall, it was a lot of fun and it we were very happy with the performance. (and the guys at the ramp thought it was just the coolest thing ever.) LOL. It runs!
Mostly we were playing with the boat but we did get some shooting in too. I got the first two fish I shot at, including this dinky gar. (my shot percentage rapidly went downhill from there) K hit his first two in a row too. This silver was splashing around with another silver like they were getting ready to spawn. ??
