Clinker

Link doesn’t work for me either, but with the latest Mercs, probably cleaner and more economical than most other 1800hp boats, of which there are many of course - just when they’re hidden in the hull you tend not to give it a second thought.

Yep - on a 15 year old engine, I'd sooner see at 750 hours - when I've looked at used boats it's clear the low hours ones are the ones that get neglected. Once you get to at least 50 hours a year, much more likely the boat is owned by an enthusiast who keeps up with maintenance and servicing - the ones that sit in a harbour/marina and get used three or four times a year are the ones to avoid. With leisure hours engines, it's generally neglect and non-use that kills them rather than getting worn out - commercial users often get to 5000 hours before changing - that's 50-100 years for most leisure users!

Great boats that punch well above their weight - I ran one for 9 years

...so the saying goes - very true for me today - with the sun shining and glistening off the sea (I can see the sea when I’m working) I took the afternoon off and caught 1 dogfish, 1 small dab, and the smallest smoothhound I’ve ever seen 🤣

Yep all ok - didn’t take any photos - wound was cleaned with alcohol on the boat and after the hook was removed and fortunately it was a new hook and had just had the one lot of squid on it (which didn’t catch anything apart from me!) Really the point of starting this thread was just to say to check that whatever you have on board to cut a hook will actually do the job. And of course to check you have a decent first aid kit onboard - something I’ve always done and I also keep a waterproof quick reference book onboard.

If push comes to shove, I’ll just have to buy a pump so I can empty the tank for winter - both our cars are petrol (never had one of those diesel thingys) so I do have a way of using anything I had to pump out. I’ll be using E5 as long as I can in the meantime.

I just dropped the weight as I was removing it - it pulled on the line and next thing I knew, the hook was well and truly through the side of my thumb - worst part was the barb hadn’t come right through and pushing it that little bit further to get it right through was a real grit-your-teeth thing! I wasn’t even close to not being able to get back in though - and had I been on my own, of course I’d have had no option but to pull the anchor - it would have been quite uncomfortable though - grandson’s rowing skills improved to get us back from the mooring in the tender!

Fishing with my daughter and grandson night before last - had a nice evening catching a ‘baby shark’ (smoothhound), a few dogs, a spider crab and a tub gurnard (first time he’d seen one) - just putting the rods away when for the first time ever I got myself hooked past the barb - it hurts! So I got the pliers with the idea of pushing the hook through and snipping off the end. No chance - couldn’t get anywhere near cutting though the hook, so had to bandage the hook against my thumb so I could get on with the business of getting us home. Daughter not impressed with having to haul anchor! But she managed well and on the way home, we called at the fire station to get the hook cut through (benefits of a close community) - it didn’t half hurt to push it though past the barb before it could be cut. So today, pressie from Amazon arrives courtesy of my daughter - nice pair of decent snips! Moral of the story - whatever you have onboard to cut through hooks, check it does the job before needed in anger - and if you haven’t got a first aid kit on board, get one - I was very glad of it - without it, an uncomfortable journey home (as luck would have it we weren’t far away) would have instead been a painful journey home!

I'm a bit late to this discussion, but yes, I use premium fuel in addition to Quickstor and Quickleen on every fill up and will continue to do so for as long as I can. I'm sure the engine would cope with E10, but it's the fuel that's stored over winter that concerns me. I try to run it down but sometimes I don't get out as often as I would hope in October which is the last month my insurance lets me stay on the mooring.

I'm good at dancing out of the way 😁 Front half of a mackerel - they were in short supply so we were cutting them in half - a couple of nice ones caught on tail halves too Been glorious here last few days - I think the camera is making me look pinker than I am though!

I say tope PB, not like I've a huge amount of them to my name!

It’s a drying mooring so I carry the fuel to it and fill when it’s sitting on the sand - I have 3 x 20 litre cans and I tend to top up on a day when I’m not using it so that fueling doesn’t encroach on using it - the petrol station is only 5 minutes away so I can make 2 or 3 trips back and fore with 60 litres at a time. Nearest water side fueling is over 30 miles away so I’d use the best part of 60 litres just to go and fill up.

As and when work, tides and weather allows - once a week on average sometimes more - I ceramic coated the engine when it was new and before it went in at the beginning of the season - I usually just rinse off the salt with the fresh water as I do the cabin top and sides, sometimes not - this is my second recent Merc so now at 9 years of ownership between the two and providing you keep the black reasonably clean it keeps its looks OK - the previous one looked almost as new when I traded it in at 9 years old - photo taken just before we removed it

What HP? My boat is very similar in size and style with a 225 Merc outboard best planing economy is 4.1mpg (US) be interesting to see how the I/O compares

😄 managed to go through the whole popularity of diesels in cars without getting one so certainly don’t want one on the boat!

My lips are sealed 🙂

Always liked the look of these - only ever seen one in the flesh and was impressed by how spacious it was.

I found a 9 month old PM on WSF that I hadn’t seen telling me this was up and running again - notification of PM’s isn’t great over there with the new format - I found another that was 8 months old and unanswered 🙂

...so here it is