POLLIWOGG

Just a little down to earth thing .......You are custom building a boat for someone, there are regs on how boats are built and the last thing you want is some official person coming along and making you take it out of the water after time and money spent on it so do some homework to make sure its legal. Second ..do some math and figure out the displacement of your pontoons in lbs and figure how much weight you can to put on this, including persons the more you add the lower the boat will sit in the water and the less stable it will be and you have a capacity plate that limits the people and weight on board. I would suggest you keep it simple, build your pirate ship around seating and railings and accessibility, this is for kids so safety first....a couple life rings and throw lines and easy boarding from the water, front and sides. Does a motor boat at anchor require one of the persons on board to have an operators card? Good luck.....Oh yeah .. no balloons , they are environmentally disastrous in water and hard on motors when they get pulled into the water pumps.

First thing is if your talking new or used or vintage. Old inboards and I/O are fairly strait foreword to work on and can be replaced cheap with a motor from the wrecking yard but pollution rate is something like = to 75 cars. There are a lot of 20' to 30' out there that are going cheap but you have to consider the cost of running them. The new outboards are probably the most advanced motors built, most inboards are from the auto industry and might have some catching up to do and might inherit some of the problems of car engines like gasket problems. If it was me and I had the cash, in the 16-19 range it would be a new outboard, 20 and up a volvo I/O. I run vintage and have touched every part of my ford - volvo I/O .

I know a fella that is way ahead of you....Know anybody that wants to buy 1,000 gal of 3 year old gas or 1,000 gal of 3 year old diesel and a truck load of canned goods and dog food?....don't forget a watchdog.

86 F250 pulls a 72 Glastron, bring on the depression so us working poor can afford new toys! Thats not a big Lund, them's short people.. buddy used to put his shoes under his knees when taking pictures of fish to make them look bigger.

11,600 hits on google for "If somebody farts on the ice and you are not close enough to hear them does it still make a sound? "

Well you got me thinking so I tried to find something on wave theory for ice cover and can't find anything. a boat on the water has a hull speed depending on the length of the boat , a 24 ' boat rides over its wake at about 7kn and starts to plain but a car on ice has an infinite length and rides on the bending ice so it should never run up on its own wake unless its moving faster than the water can be displaced. The problem occurs when the wave that you push around you comes in contact with structure or shore or another wave and has nowhere to go and heaves the ice up while you come along and push the ice down. So on your way out and out in the open your reasonably safe but on your way back to shore is where you get in trouble. If you come to shore one a little ways behind the other the second vehicle could be at greater risk due to wave bouncing back from shore under the ice from the first vehicle combined with the wave from the second vehicle pushed toward shore. I don't know if this helps or is just confusing?

This is how a guy told me to chum... You take a can with the top cut out, put a hole in the bottom to thread a line through so what you have is a can on a long line. put your chum in with a stone and cover with a tissue held with rubber band. You lower the can down to the desired depth and give it a jerk to rip open the wet tissue and your chum is all right where you want it. Ive never tried it.

Will state farm insure a boat without moving all your other insurance to them. They won't even talk to you about motorcycle insurance unless you plan on insuring another vehicle with it.

Guys that travel might want to check and make sure you are covered in all the places you go, some limit you to an area. I would hate to pay for insurance you can't use.

If you want to takes media time away from the coming budget, provide a really really stupid story that will get more attention. These guys aren't as dumb as you think.

We would talk about our own politics but our guys quit 2 weeks after the election and said they would be back in 2 months with some ideas, the 2 months is almost over. The minority party in power had the support of a separatist party but now the separatist are leaning away from them, so it should get interesting. The milestone will be passed when the U.S. can elect a black guy or a woman and its no big deal, then its time to celebrate. The fun thing about American politics is we know that everything we say here is being monitored by some U.S. security outfit that probably has a file on OFC because of our American friends here.

If he's like our guy he'll quit in 2 weeks.

2 years ago a coast guard guy said mandatory ins. for boats was coming, so it'll be here sooner or later.

If you use a long line to launch take it off the bow eye before getting under way, wash off the bow can pull the line into the water and it can end up in your prop. If you rig a permanent bow line make sure its not long enough to reach the prop. If you rig a bow line to the aft cleat you have a ready dock line and a legal boarding devise that can be grabbed from the water. A long line from the aft cleat around the far dock cleat and back to you can be used to control your boat and draw it to the dock. A boat hook is handy when loading as its hard to push a boat with a dock line. Put the trailer in just far enough to line up the keel with the keel rollers so the boat stays straight when you winch it on, too far in and the boat floats all over and doesn't stay straight. Check out the ramp for hazards like a drop off at the end of the ramp or beach gravel piled up by power loaders before you launch. If its a roller trailer leave the winch strap or a safety line on till the boats in the water, you don't want the boat rolling off the trailer on the way down the ramp.

I had to rebuild the tranny in my car last year because it was ruined by water. My bud had the drive shaft for the oil pump in his f150 break because the motor was full of water and it froze but he hadn't drove it since he changed the oil pan a couple months before. We figured he had a funnel for the oil and another one in the rad and got them mixed up, ooops . But now that I think about it ,it was parked in the woods and a good candidate for condensation.

DIY boat magazine did a test on fuel additives for removing water, the results were it only works when stirred and settles back when the vehicle is not moving it would help in the lines and filter where the fuel is moving but will not remove all the water. As furnace tanks are mounted with the tap high you probably have at least a couple gal of water and the only way I would think you can be sure of getting it would be to siphon or pump it out.

Hasn't been illegal to fish in Ont. for 40 years yet, has it? Must be getting close. I get lots of guys asking how to keep the cops off them. You can get a free courtesy check from your local Power Squadron, that gives you a tag to display on your boat. It might keep the cops off you if they're busy. Become a member of Canadian Power squadron and fly the flag, one look at the flag and they know you have done a course that far exceeds their requirements and your boat is probably fully rigged Better still become Commander of your local squadron and they go right on by.

OW-OW-OW MY FINGER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Biteme--- I suspect your a bridge member of your squadron? If not , if you let them know you want to do the course and they get a few more they will try to run it , if not they might try to run one with another squadron or at least let you know who is running one. I don't think we have ever done celestial here but I have a guy that can and would love to instruct it if we could get a class together..

The place to start would be with the basic boating course, it has changed since I did mine but its usually 12 nights starts with types of boats, power boat handling, sail boat handling, Gov. regs, charts, aids to nav., some plotting and calculations, compass ,bearings,fixes,seamanship and emergencies, lines, canals and tides,anchoring, weather. Probably something like 3-4 hrs a night + homework. Half way through this course you write for an operators card thats good here and in most of the U.S. and at the end of the course you get to write a nice big test that will have you thinking for sure. From this course you can go into the more advanced courses or you can go directly into some of the advanced courses. Talk is that they might raise the prices of the courses to reflect the value more so now is the time to take them. There is a lot of value in the CPS courses because its done as non profit by volunteers and they are not easy, you will learn something and get benefits of free membership for a year. The Boat Pro course is the one if you just want to get your card. It was originally the Squadrons Kid's course but rather than start up a dumbed down version for the card we use it. Its usually 2 nights and you'll learn more than you need to pass the test. We don't do much hands on training because the courses are usually off season, done by volunteers who are out in their own boats in the summer, but I have heard that there are some outfits doing hands on training in the Kawarthas. The Canadian Power And Sail Squadrons are volunteers teaching safe boating for over 50 years. Your local squadron is made up of people you Know and they are hungry for new members and more so for active members, most of us here would have a lot of fun in their local squadron.

Buddy has a wrecking yard, used to take them out on the ice and wind em up to 80mph or so and hit the brakes YYYYEEEAHHH HAAAAAA.... mind you there would be like 14" of ice and you could do stuff like that 30 years ago..

My brother got into a deal like this with a dodge truck, They were told not to fix the tranny if it wasn't under warranty but they went ahead and replaced the tranny and billed him for it because it was used commercially. They lied and said they got the go from him but he was away when they said they called and they finally admitted they did it without consent. He had to give them a cheque top get the truck back and did not sign the bill where it says he accepted the charge. From there he went to the bank and canceled the cheque ,drove across the road and traded it for a GM. The Dodge dealer got a little upset over this and threatened to take him to court, Well my brother had been trying to get paid for a job through the courts for 5 years and got 5 or 10 cents on the dollar so he said go ahead. Now the next thing we did was call up Chrysler Ca. and give them a blast , we never heard from the dealer again. So I would suggest you call up Polaris and ask them how they pick their dealers, if you become a threat to the guys loosing the dealership they might work something out give you some satisfaction.

Canadian Power And Sail Squadrons will be starting spring courses soon. Check www.cps-ecp.ca/ for your local squadron and take a friend.

Guys used to bring them into machine shop and we found that they were knocking out the last bit of ice and changing the angle of the blades so they wouldn't cut well at all, thats why you don't lend them.

Was the back of the truck sitting on bottom? Many years ago a guy went through in Belleville, I don't think he got everything but I think he got his expenses covered after going to court and claiming collision damages from colliding with the bottom of the bay. If I remember right if they can trace an oil slick to your boat its a minimum $1,000 fine, so he'll be paying something. If they let us stud our tires he could a drove right out of there.