JDP

No I don't think you make things up, in fact I regularly take note of your advice. However this discussion I believe is in regards to a boat trailer used possibly in a marine environment, submerged under saltwater. Bearing buddies don't put excessive pressure on the bearing grease, besides they have a pressure relief mechanism. They do use enough pressure to keep the bearing packed and not allow saltwater, sand and dirt to get onto the bearing causing premature failure, hence why they are used on almost every boat trailer, not only here but in the US too where they also have a very large boating community. On one trip alone I clocked 14000km towing and launching one of my boats, over which time I never had to touch a bearing at all. Normally I only change bearings when I buy a new outfit just to make sure they are in good order, fitted by a marine mechanic who like everyone else fits bearing buddies to their own trailer. We have over 250,000 registered trailer boats in my state alone and I can assure you it would be extremely rare to find a single boat without these fitted at any trailer boat carpark. Yes bearing buddies can fail when they haven't been maintained of fitted properly but given that any trailer carrying over 750kg gross has to have the equivalent of a 12 month mot, most trailers are maintained very well. Something goes wrong and you are found at fault or a garage who passed the inspection and all hell is to pay, hence the buddies to prevent problems.

Girls make such good fishers, most people are willing to help girls out, so they can learn from so many people. Attitudes and patients towards girls is also often greater than what people will give to boys. Good to see another female champion.

Ive sent stuff before but because I put the value of the item on the postage declaration (legal requirement) they got hit with all the duties and handling fees they would of gotten if it had come direct from a store. I believe there is a value that these fees don't apply on but if you under value an item and it gets lost you are stuffed insurance wise. Postage has gone a bit crazy too sending stuff from here in Oz back to the UK. Often though, most anglers carry pretty much to their weight limit which makes it hard to wind anyone to add a couple of kg to their bag. Another option is to find out if anyone is heading overseas and get them to bring gear back, which isn't so easy now with Covid. I believe https://www.ottostackleworld.com.au ship gear back to the UK from here. I use a few US companies for the odd thing I get here but the last few years its been cheaper to buy here in Oz by quite a good amount.

I think part of the difference is that they don't use matting between the mould here and the vacuum part means no harmful fumes etc https://www.clubmarine.com.au/exploreboating/articles/23-5-Complete-rig

I don't personally know anyone who doesn't use bearing buddies, even a good friend who is a world leading expert on lubrications has them on his trailer, never heard of bearing buddies being an issue. This is is the friend I mention and his list of credentials https://au.linkedin.com/in/sam-shatrov-49358328 if its good enough for him its good enough for me. I did see him today but hadn't seen this comment but will run it by him next time, you may well be right but it wouldn't make sense why every mechanic and dealer recommend and use them.

Been meaning to buy a multimeter, now I have excuse. I have both Lowrance and Garmin but went off the Garmin as its their premium end model, didn't think to check through Lowrance. That thread I found ended unresolved, where some had been battery issues and others the rectifier.

My Suzuki 140 4 stroke seems to be pushing out 15 volts of charge according to my Garmin head unit. Hadn't really thought to much about it untill I just realised two of the bait pumps Ive recently replaced wearnt fused. They are now fused but 15 volts is still to much but also seems to be a common issue. The twin battery's were tested about 3 months ago after some electrical work and were fine then. Contacts all look good but my concern is that several people seem to have had the same issue even after Suzuki replaced the rectifier and battery's. I don't remember if it was doing this on battery 1 or 2 or both running at the same time, so will need to check this further on the next trip out. If it's just on one battery, I suppose I can just assume that ones starting to fail and not to much of an issue.

Not just marine grease but high temp marine grease. If you use the kind of marine grease that is used on the engine to do the bearings to, you might find that it liquifies and finds its way out on big drives. Bearing buddies are used on most boat trailers here, these simply push grease onto the brearings under the pressure from a spring and are easy to top up using a grease gun.

No, both two different things. Rivale is basically two almost identical moulds that sit close together where fibreglass is injected between making far stronger and lighter boats, hence the 2.3ton 4x4 parked ontop of the 4.85 hull in the video. They do that at all the boat shows ( park a 4x4 on one of their hulls). This also cuts production time down to around 1/3 I believe and has virtually no waste. Only certain hulls are currently made this way but they all use the specially impregnated ply or some kind of foam board in a few hulls. I mostly had open boats when I lived in the UK, so I can't see why these wouldn't be an awsome little boat for back there. The kind of seas I mostly encountered around the IOW were from mostly wind action and very little in the way of the ground swells we encounter. Ground swells can be anything from 5-10m but offshore barely noticeable but when you get back to inshore bar crossing things can soon become more dramatic. This is part of why so many boats are powered relatively higher than the UK, you need instant power when following on the shoulder of a wave that meets pressure waves from outgoing tides etc at river mouths. Take a look at this video about 17 mins in and onwards to see just how much better our small boats are over here when it comes to coming back through our bar crossings. My daughter had a near miss with the charter boat in the last couple of weeks that shook her up a fair bit. When a wave picks your 45ft cat up and throws you towards the rocks with around 20 passengers depending on you, it's not a good feeling. In the small boats it is a good feeling, I find bar crossing fun, a bit like JetSki playing. Anyway these are some very good friends of ours who recently sold up home to live on a sailing cat, this just happens to be their latest video from a couple of days ago and shows a bar crossing looking ugly. Note how the sea looks quite reasonable offshore away from the crossing.

I'm using 20-30lb in the 131, not just the boat but particularly from the shore because of how well it casts. In saying that we are mostly flicking lures 30g or heavier, so can't comment on the very light lures. I should get a spool of 10lb or lower to see how it casts very light lures but getting any of this braid can be difficult as it's so popular and sells out fast even though it's around 3x more expensive than some braids. My daughter uses both suffix and sunline bellow 10lb casting unweighted softplastics which are about 1 1/2 inch long as well as hardbodies bellow 5g. She's away hunting due to bad weather pushing her off the water, not sure when she will return ( as soon as she gets a deer ) but I will find out more about the light braids when she does. She's already into her third day in remote wildernesses locations tottaly off grid.

I believe it's a treatment the ply goes through. Quote from them. For over 50 years we have proven that we have the strongest and most advanced hull design of any trailer boat on the market in Australia today. We use specially designed plywood timber in key structural areas. More superior than any marine-grade timber, the individual layers in our product is treated and protected prior to assembly ensuring no further treatment is needed, even when cut. The Rivale process is also unique to this manufacturer and now used in more and more of their boats.

We are paying about $1.12 so half what you are paying. As for the Bimini, there are clears onboard that zip in under the canopy then clip around the outside of the window, which are pretty useful running home in big seas or cold winters days after diving.

My first one of these was the same boat used by Hans Tholstrup in his epic 7500 km run from Darwin to Japan powered by just a 90 Honda 4 stroke. During his journey he encountered cyclone winds, pirates and having to partly submerge the boat to keep it in the water in such high winds. So quite capable and proven for a little boat.

Now the kids are driving its 5 cars and a boat!!!

Jon has seen pic's of it when I first bought it. Theres a nice soft fold down rear lounge on it for when ever he wants a break from those chilly winters. Altered the aluminium trailer for quick launch and retrieve, easy drive on and off.

Its a Haines signature. They are the biggest and most awarded boat company here in Oz and come from an offshore blue water racing heritage. The company split from the Haines hunter side about 30 years ago and the standard of the hunter series fell in many peoples opinions. There's an interesting video if you enjoy boating stuff, which is in a couple of parts showing the factory and build. There are numerous signature models both big and small, with mine being in that small to mid size. The boat in the video with a 4x4 parked onto of it is a 4.85m very light weight boat which will probably be my next boat as these are so light and run very economically on 70-90 4 strokes (around 4km per litre).

This is my fourth version of this same hull, only bought this one because I missed out on the boat I sold my zodiac to buy. Other versions of this 540 hull Ive owned have had more cab space and less deck area, this one just came along when there was nothing else that suited my likes. For me a boat needs to be able to be towed great distances as I like heading north to the tropics in the winter ( not last winter because of covid ). I like soft riding boats as mid morning winds normally reach 25knots and combine with large ocean swells. A 33' degree variable deadrise hull cuts through waves quite well at speed, the speed is needed to get back ahead of some storms or cyclones before things get pretty nasty. Chassing game species can be anything from casting distance from the shore to 120km runs offshore. I also enjoy trips where i island hop around the southern end of the barrier reef, taking extra fuel and water for several day trips. Camping on islands about 80km offshore is great for getting away from it all. The window opens in the middle and the front hatch swings open so you can work big popping gear from the bow on tuna etc. The door at the stern allow me to block and tackle big fish from the front seat post,or from the front ellectric anchor winch. I normally remove the seats from my boats but have seceded to leave these in for now. Plenty of underfloor storage hatches with this one too. More power would be better but the Suzuki 140 does get a half decent speed out of it. We tend to go with max hp on small boats so we can run ahead of bad weather, with clear blue sky's you often see storm fronts and have plenty of time to get out of there path.

Had three on the drive not so long ago, funny thing was that the smallest 3.85m boat was the most used and caught the most fish simply because it was so capable of inshore fishing. The 5.4m boat I now have has a variable deadrise of 33'degrees, so slices rough water quite reasonably but also sits deep in the water for great stability at rest. The 150 litre fuel tank with the Suzuki 140 gives me 2km per litre, so a pretty decent offshore range. I find that once over 4200 rpm the fuel range per litre barely changes, yes it's burning more per hour at 5500rpm but km per litre remains much the same. Will post in the boat pics section.

I moved over to 13 strand and totally love the stuff, now on six of my reels and the others mostly with Shimano ocea, which is also very good braid in my opinion. Been using the suffix 131 for about 12 months where most braids would of been swapped over several times by now ( I fish several times per week and push the line to its limits ). Had J braid in the past but found it soon lost colour and strength. I do tend to use lighter class lines closer to their rating strength rather than buy 50lb braid and only ever use light dag settings.

No worries, distance is the cure!!!

Screwdriver sets with long handles and soft grips, any brand. Spanners a mix of all kinds of nasty makes, with my best being Stanley ratchet headed ones ( still relatively cheap ) Sockets, sidchrome and plenty of odd ones from old kits. I did invest in a decent snapon torque wrench after doing the marine mechanics module of our skippers ticket. My daughter rounded two bolts into one the Tafe aluminium engine heads using normal socket sets so I thought this is something I don't want to do to my own engine!!! In the boat I carry minimal in the way of tools. one decent adjustable, two screwdrivers, one electricle tester and plenty of fuses.

I went through so many because most were rotten!!!..bit like many of the rust bucket cars I owned when I lived there. None were what I would now call decent boats. Thinking back on how my parents left me with people they barely new, even left me in a tent for two days when I was 4 at the IOW pop festival!!!!...Now the shoe is on the other foot and Ive abandoned them !!! That search for a great little boat that ticks all the boxes is an addictive one, I'm already looking at different boats having only owned my current one a few months. A boat that fits for towing long distances, handles offshore conditions and can still be used on shallow sheltered waters is hard to find. I also want something fast that won't use much fuel but most importantly have room to fish with JonC one day 🙃

Gee mate, looks like its straight from a showroom.

If you were worried about drilling above the waterline, Imagine how I felt drilling through the hull of one of my old boats to put a 1kw transducer through it. These look like an interesting concept, they have several models available with varying degrees of angle and depth.

Loved being on boats since the age of 4 (51 years ago). It was sort of a way of baby sitting for my parents who regularly dropped me onboard a friend of theirs boat. I soon found every weekend and school holiday was on some kind of local boat, most charters out of Yarmouth IOW. When I was 10 I stayed on one boat for two weeks solid in the school hols working as tea boy and boat scrubber!!! Now I still enjoy playing on the water and feeling how differently boats handle in por conditions (unless they are slammers!!). My last boat was a little zodiac 550 pro and extreme fun in poor sea conditions. With a 25'degree hull these things even land softly after jumping off waves at speed. Im really lucky in the fact I have many contacts and boats I can hop on if I don't feel like getting my own out.