Messages

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General Discussion about the Great Alaskan / Re: EZ Anchor Puller is now out of business - plus seeking advice

« on: October 17, 2024, 09:21:26 AM »

Thanks Todd. I am actually in contact with the new company that Dan mentioned, and trying to find time to get out and get him a video of the problem happening. I definitely don't want to put the unit in power down if I can avoid it, but hoping I can come up with a solution somehow because it's really annoying when that loop of chain is flopping around. The last time I went out I did watch a little bit more closely as the rode paid out, and it seemed that the issue might be stemming from the rode being wound up too much in the center, and then the chain flopping off to the side as it is paid out. I will have to get this video though so that I can hopefully see exactly what's going on and get it figured out.

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General Discussion about the Great Alaskan / Re: EZ Anchor Puller is now out of business - plus seeking advice

« on: September 27, 2024, 08:18:49 AM »

Yep, I am aware of the motor position, just didn't want to put in the work when I received the winch because I was antsy to get my boat on the water and good seemed good enough. I did call their support at the time and ask them, specifically about the roller guide and the angle the rode was going to go across it, if it was ok to mount in that configuration, to which they said 'absolutely'. I think you could be right, I am going to add the project to my winter list of todos (growing by the day) and even if it doesn't solve the problem I think it will still be a win to reduce that angle and have a straighter run from the roller to the drum.

As for switching the wires, I don't think it's that simple for the rebel winches. Since the clutch for the free fall is integrated, unless that is disabled I don't think you can switch the motor polarity at will, as it would just free fall any time you wanted to pick it up and would be strictly power down. That trick would work on any of the non-free fall ones tho.

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General Discussion about the Great Alaskan / Re: EZ Anchor Puller is now out of business - plus seeking advice

« on: September 26, 2024, 07:49:12 PM »

Thanks Dan. Another thing that popped into my mind right now is that my winch is feeding line out from the bottom of the winch, due to how I wanted the motor oriented and to save myself some work when I initially received the winch. If I get a wild hair I may try to flip it around so that it feeds line off the top, which would involve me having to shift the orientation of the motor to the opposite way, perhaps a straighter run would allow it to do less stop and starting... Kind of grasping at hairs though at that point. I will try the UHMW trick first and see how that goes.

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General Discussion about the Great Alaskan / Re: EZ Anchor Puller is now out of business - plus seeking advice

« on: September 26, 2024, 09:46:10 AM »

I have thought about doing something like that mod with the UHMW, it would definitely help. I wonder if my anchor weight + chain weight is the issue here, I have a 22lb claw and 50' of 1/4" chain, so maybe the weight is excessive and causing my issue. The rode spools on the drum tightly when I pull it up, but every time without fail if the winch is free falling that loop of chain is up there banging around causing problems, to which I have actually contemplated putting the winch in powered down mode to avoid. Either way, I am going to get some UHMW and bolt it onto the guide like you say to start, that's a simple mod that should at least help the rode from fouling in the roller if it gets that far. I will try to get a video of it happening next time I am on the water and post it here as well.

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General Discussion about the Great Alaskan / Re: EZ Anchor Puller is now out of business - plus seeking advice

« on: September 25, 2024, 02:58:27 PM »

Thanks for the info Dan! By overspooling I mean the spool starts going too fast or over spins while the anchor is dropping probably due to the initial torque of the anchor as it accelerates, which results in the equivalent of a birds nest on a conventional fishing reel, where there is a loose loop of chain banging around as it spins around the spool, which then either throws the rode over and off of the guide which then sometimes jams in the roller, or, as what happened yesterday while I was in Mexico, a link of chain gets jammed between the drum and the base and the whole unit slams to a stop. Luckily I was able to get that one back out but I could see that situation actually damaging the winch if it continues. The jam yesterday left a chain link shaped dent in the base of my winch. In the past I have stopped it from happening if the situation allows by just putting my hand or foot on the back of the spool as it drops to slightly slow it down, but there are times where I don't feel comfortable leaving the helm to do that, and it's just kind of a pain, as well as a bit sketchy to put hands or feet nearby an outgoing weighted line sinking to the bottom of the ocean. Fishing reels often come with a knob that allows you to put a slight bit of tension on the spool to stop this from happening or minimize it, but I wasn't able to find an equivalent feature on these winches when I looked around for it. I will try reaching out to savwinch and see what they say, but definitely curious to hear if anyone else is seeing this happen and if so if they have any solutions for it.

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General Discussion about the Great Alaskan / EZ Anchor Puller is now out of business - plus seeking advice

« on: September 25, 2024, 11:51:26 AM »

I have been having some issues with my rode and chain fouling due to the drum overrunning on free fall on my EZ Rebel 5, so I went to reach out to EZ Anchor's support this morning and lo and behold they are now out of business as of August 2024. Does anyone else run into this issue and have a solution? If I could just adjust the tension on the spool just a hair I think that the issue would be resolved no problem. I could solve it by disabling the free fall mode, which I might do down the road, but if I could just add a hair of tension to the spool I think it would work great. I looked at the manual and could not find any information for adjusting the tension on the spool.

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Blood on the Deck! (And Other Grand Adventures!) / Re: Coronado Islands / Mexico

« on: September 13, 2024, 10:39:30 AM »

You too Todd, hope your trip goes well.. I am also getting ready, I have to do some work to do on my rigging, but excited to get on the water and catch some lobsters for sure.

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Blood on the Deck! (And Other Grand Adventures!) / Re: Coronado Islands / Mexico

« on: September 12, 2024, 05:06:29 PM »

Those short finned tunas sure are tasty.  I keep soy sauce in the boat just in case.  I got one last year in Oregon about 20 miles of the beach. 

Ya, it disappeared quickly. I have a little bit of toro left but other than that it's pretty much all gone. I have a lot of happy friends haha

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Blood on the Deck! (And Other Grand Adventures!) / Coronado Islands / Mexico

« on: September 11, 2024, 04:05:44 PM »

It's been a weird, slow year around here, I have caught a lot of bass, barracuda, rockfish, but only a small handful of pelagics, definitely not for a lack of trying. My buddy and I went for a day trip down to try out the Coronado Islands off of Baja last week, and went 1 for 2 on BFT we happened upon. We were running between the south island and a spot 6 miles south when I saw them up foaming and put my buddy on them, who cast into the foam and immediately hooked up and got rocked. We stuck around and worked foamers for the next 45 minutes all alone before the calvary noticed and descended on us. On one spot of foam I was able to get a colt sniper into the fray and hook up myself, and land a nice one. The rest of the day was a pretty big bust, some big calico bass but none of the yellowtail we had come down looking for initially. It was a slow pick for the rest of the floatilla of boats around as well from what we heard. Coronado islands are absolutely stunning, really beautiful place to go minus the boat traffic.

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Blood on the Deck! (And Other Grand Adventures!) / Re: Headed to Sekui for salmon and Halibut

« on: September 10, 2024, 12:00:09 PM »

Nice one! I love my shimano electric reel for deep dropping rockfish, makes pulling a couple pounds of lead from 1k feet a breeze. That's my kids favorite type of fishing lol.

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Projects - Glacier Boats of Alaska boat projects / Re: GA28 in Bakersfield California

« on: August 07, 2024, 01:34:43 PM »

I recently went on an overnight trip out at San Clemente island and got much deeper into my house bank than I thought I would (I had used about half of my 400 amp hours by the time I returned the next day). It was surprising how quickly things added up, not that it was at all worrisome, but I just wasn't expecting to have used that much. In retrospect I did spend the vast majority of the time on anchor so there wasn't much charging happening. Another thing that can help with the winch and bms issue is more batteries in parallel, which will reduce the demand on each one, so instead of potentially getting larger batteries to make your bank get more smaller ones (provided the bms is comparable in both). I have had no problem running my winch on 2 kilovault hlx+ batteries but as you said, they have beefy bms's and are now out of business, so... \_(ツ)_/

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

« on: August 02, 2024, 12:18:39 PM »

That's great efficiency. It's seriously awesome how efficient these boats are. Sounds like it's time to get out on the water with a bit more of a focused mission.

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

« on: May 22, 2024, 07:56:39 AM »

Yep, that's off the east end back side, out near the Vs.

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

« on: May 21, 2024, 03:53:48 PM »

Yep, all good information for sure. I definitely gave some thought about how to rectify the issue, and seems to me that even though my fuel capacity will be way over what I will probably ever use I think it will be good to have the fuel both fore and aft that I can selectively use to hopefully help trim out my boat a little bit better. The 200# measured effect on trim definitely helped me to gain at least a ballpark idea about the amount of change that I should expect from my effort. I tried to talk my wife into the twins approach and she wasn't having it lol, so I will have to do the next best thing. I love my boat though, flaws and all. It's been a horrible spring season for game fish so far, but my son and I went out a couple of days ago and found a new honey hole for red vermilion, so we are making the best of it and finding ways to put in time on the water and turns of the prop. The work is going to have to wait until the down season.

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

« on: May 21, 2024, 10:00:18 AM »

I have been pretty busy with other projects but want to just note here about the trim stuff, that when I was launching at some point in the last few months I had my dad stand over the transom and measured the differing of the trim, which was approximately an inch of bow up trim adjustment for a little over 200 lbs almost directly over the transom. I have been thinking about how I want to attack it for a while, and I think I am going to remove my insulated fish box in the floor (I haven't used it yet, and am thinking that I probably just want to use kill bags instead of a fish hold) and put a 2'6" long fuel tank with the same cross section as the existing one into the spot where the insulated box currently is. That seems like it would be the easiest to retrofit and one of the cheaper options with the biggest gain, potentially even correcting the issue more or less altogether. In any case, it's probably not happening until winter but I thought for future reference it's probably a good thing to note here.