Messages

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Blood on the Deck! (And Other Grand Adventures!) / Re: Sekiu, blood on the deck!

« on: July 02, 2025, 01:46:59 PM »

Cool trip, that's quite the haul! I have an f350 and a northern lite, and put bags and stable loads on the truck. The stable loads are fantastic, they work awesome. I only ever use my airbags now to just bring the back of the truck up so the headlights aren't pointing up. I have flirted with putting the camper on and then pulling my boat with it but I haven't committed to that quite yet. The camper is 3k dry and I have about a 1k tongue weight, and my truck has a 3800 lb payload, so it would put my truck slightly over rated payload. One of these days maybe I will give it a shot. Anyway, thanks for sharing rbob! Looks like it was a fun journey and cool to see you hauling the camper and pulling the boat at the same time.

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Projects - Glacier Boats of Alaska boat projects / Re: Bob from Olympia, 28 GA build

« on: July 02, 2025, 01:39:04 PM »

Dang, I am jealous. That system looks killer. I keep telling myself meh, do I really need to put up the money and time for one? But then I go through the fun of trying to grab a mooring ball in the wind between boats and swimmers and it's like yeah, I should probably make this more of a priority. Having the ability to push the bow around just seems like it would make things far less sketchy a lot of the time. Nice job on the install, it looks like it works great.

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Projects - Glacier Boats of Alaska boat projects / Re: Bob from Olympia, 28 GA build

« on: May 12, 2025, 08:36:09 AM »

Yes indeed. Thanks rbob for the info, very helpful. I can't wait to see how the system works in your boat. It looks pretty rad.

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Projects - Glacier Boats of Alaska boat projects / Re: Bob from Olympia, 28 GA build

« on: May 09, 2025, 11:14:47 AM »

How much do each of the battery and the pump weigh approximately? Curious how installing a system like this would be for correcting my trim a bit further.

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Projects - Glacier Boats of Alaska boat projects / Re: Outdoor build of GA Kodiak, Orange, CA

« on: May 05, 2025, 10:04:19 AM »

Thanks Dan, I appreciate the suggestions. I will have a look at those things, I suspect it's due to an open wire run, so that's going to be the first thing I close up to try to rectify the problem.

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Projects - Glacier Boats of Alaska boat projects / Re: Outdoor build of GA Kodiak, Orange, CA

« on: April 25, 2025, 03:04:02 PM »

I took my boat out to catalina for a couple days to suss out the upgrades I made this winter. The results were quite positive, although there are a few more things I need to dial in still.

First item was trying to fix the trim with the addition of another fuel tank on the aft end. The boat trims better, it probably rectified about half of the bow down trim. I feel like the boat gets on plane easier and smoother, and feel like my fuel consumption was a bit better although I couldn't really confirm that due to an issue with the tracked distance of my trip. I think if I end up putting either a kicker or the battery for a jet thruster system like rbob is installing on his boat into my vessel it will probably more or less fix the issue, so those will be the next step I look at once I get a wild hair to start chopping things up again. The boat also seemed easier to get back on the trailer at the end of the day, specifically winding the bow eye up to be snug on the roller. That used to be a huge pain in the butt, so hopefully that wasn't just me dreaming that it was easier this time.

Second item was my anchor winch, which I originally installed winding to the drum from underneath and rolling sharply over the guide on the bow, after being told by the manufacturer that that was an ok way to install the winch. The issue with the winch was that when it was put in free fall the rode would slop around on the spool and a large loop of free chain would start swinging around the spinning drum and banging things or violently jamming the entire unit as the chain was nearing being spooled off. I contacted the new owners of the company and they were helpful but I wanted to try flipping the winch around to feed off the top of the spool similar to how Dan B has his boat set up before I really dove in with them and used their time. After switching the unit around so that the rode runs off the top of the drum it is night and day better, it spools on more evenly when it's retrieved and when it's dropped it rarely fouls now, with the worst fouling that happened being the rode jumped off the guide once or twice. Having the ability to anchor easily and confidently went a long way toward making my day fishing way better. I also installed a second control switch up on the bow, which is maybe my favorite upgrade of all of these since it offers so much more flexibility and hands on control of dropping the ground tackle. When I wanted to drop the anchor quietly it was super simple now to drop and just hand feed, which is awesome.

Finally I installed the ladder that Lindy was kind enough to send my way, and while I didn't have to use it (thankfully) I am super happy with the install and the unit. It's great to know that if I am alone and somehow end up in the water that I will have a much better shot at getting back onboard by myself, and my family will be happy to not have to use the janky rope ladder I had previously any longer.

There were a few issues that I still need to work through, main one being that there seemed to be a lot more fuel vapors in the cabin. When I camped I just turned on the ventilation fan for the fuel coffins to keep from getting gassed out, but it would be nice to track down why that is and try to stop the majority of those vapors from getting to the living space.

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Projects - Glacier Boats of Alaska boat projects / Re: Bob from Olympia, 28 GA build

« on: April 22, 2025, 08:18:04 AM »

Dang, nice chinook. I sure wish we had those this far south. Looking forward to seeing how your improvements came out. I am headed out to try mine out in a couple hours.

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Boat Systems - Electrical, Electronics, Motors, Plumbing & Tankage etc / Re: fuel tanks

« on: April 02, 2025, 03:47:48 PM »

Rob, if you decide to go the custom built aluminum tank route I just had a shop in san diego build a second tank for my boat (vince at https://americantanks.net/). They did a good job, although I thought the tank was a tad expensive. It seems like they are the shop in southern california to get an aluminum fuel tank from these days.

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Projects - Glacier Boats of Alaska boat projects / Re: Bob from Olympia, 28 GA build

« on: April 02, 2025, 09:40:43 AM »

Looking good. Are you running a dedicated battery for this install or are you going to just tie into your starter battery?

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Projects - Glacier Boats of Alaska boat projects / Re: Bob from Olympia, 28 GA build

« on: March 23, 2025, 11:55:53 AM »

I am really interested to see how this turns out. Looks like a fun project!

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Blood on the Deck! (And Other Grand Adventures!) / Re: Squid, halibut, white seabass at Catalina Island

« on: March 12, 2025, 09:30:10 AM »

Thanks Bob! Greasy flat weather definitely beats getting the crap kicked out of you all night haha. I had to go back and double check, 41 was the RPM (41*100), we were doing like 25mph or so... I was hoping I wasn't doing 41mph in the fog lol, that was a super super foggy trip out. I think the fastest I have taken my boat so far is right around there (41 or 42mph), but I don't think it was WOT, just as fast as I could stomach going as thoughts of the space shuttle breaking up on reentry went through my head hahahaha

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Blood on the Deck! (And Other Grand Adventures!) / Squid, halibut, white seabass at Catalina Island

« on: March 11, 2025, 08:36:35 PM »

I finally got around to editing some footage from Lucas's and my last adventure, fair pick at some short white seabass and some halibut with all the squid we wanted the day after new years day. I am trying to make a habit of creating and posting these videos to our channel as we do these trips.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2mGVDoVsNY&ab_channel=WestCoastFishingAdventures

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Projects - Glacier Boats of Alaska boat projects / Re: Outdoor build of GA Kodiak, Orange, CA

« on: March 11, 2025, 02:46:00 PM »

Rbob - same boat but different, but the same lol... Winter projects, good time for them but a lot of work, the amount of which I conveniently forgot about while out camping and fishing.

Brian, it's probably a good thing to clarify in the plans, although I would pretty much put the onus of this issue on me for not paying enough mind to the potential for trim issues to happen as well as putting a single long tank in. If I had put two tanks like most everyone else does I don't think this would have been an issue at all, or at least very minimal, even with the vastly increased displacement of the Kodiak version of the boat. At any rate, even with my bow down trim my boat is phenomenal and can only get better in my mind. It's a bit of work to improve and dial it in to how I use it and make it a better fit for myself and my family moving forward, but it's also cool to know that I can do the work to make a difference and make it better, which isn't something that someone who buys a boat off the showroom floor has much of an option of doing. And yeah, I am definitely less prone to a wave over the stern right now, so feature not a bug right? Ultimately if I can get it closer I will be happy, it doesn't have to be perfect.

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Projects - Glacier Boats of Alaska boat projects / Re: Outdoor build of GA Kodiak, Orange, CA

« on: March 10, 2025, 03:20:30 PM »

I have been using the winter time and slow cold weather to do some of the outstanding things I needed to get done on the boat. Among them are installing the ladder that Lindy was kind enough to send my way (Thanks Lindy!!!), and finally start to address my issues with my boat trimming bow down. To recap a bit, I think a large portion of my issue is a result of having a belly fuel tank that's 10' long and more or less centered around the aft ph bulkhead, which I pushed forward to a somewhat significant degree to maximize cockpit space on my boat. I mistakenly thought that the 80 gallon bait tank I would add would correct the weight forward but the tank landed more or less directly on the CoG, so it had little to no effect on the trim of the vessel. I ultimately landed on adding another tank aft for a first step to try to correct some of the bow down trim. I am hoping that adding approximately 50 gallons toward the stern will not only put more weight there, but also have the double effect of removing the weight most of the time from the forward end of the belly tank where it pools to some degree when the boat is at rest. Anyway, I got busy with the saws and cutters, opened up the space between the stringers that I had built an insulated fish hold that I decided I didn't want to actually use after all, and cleaned all of that out to make some space for another fuel tank. I am building a fuel tank coffin around it to try to isolate it from the bilge (which is working very well for my other tank). I will connect the 2 coffins with a pipe to allow the fan to pull and vent air through them when I am filling them. Fingers crossed that this is sufficient enough to solve my issues.

15

General Discussion about the Great Alaskan / Re: Knife valves for scuppers?

« on: March 10, 2025, 03:02:33 PM »

Brian, I am going to move the convo around my trim over to my build thread so I don't derail the convo here. I am really happy with how my scuppers with the tubes and these flaps worked out though, they are far better than the hodge podge idea and implementation I had for them previously.