Congratulations to me. I finally bought my first boat just 4 short days ago. It's a 16foot 79'Orrion with a 100hp Evinrude.I got it from a guy that I work with who said we could take it out for a test drive after work one day.After a few minutes,I was sold. The boat is in decent shape and the price was right. He showed me his routine for launching, running, and trailering the boat. I paid close attention to every detail because I wanted to take my wife and 3 kids boating the following weekend. I spent the next two evenings cleaning and polishing for the big day. I kept practicing in my head. "Plug, Straps, Key" and so on. I was so excited on the day of my first launch that my heart was pounding and I felt a little nervous. Launch was successful and we slowly motored out into open water, hit the throttle wide open, and waited for the thrill...and waited...and waited. After about thirty seconds of trying to get up on a plane I turned around to see a fountain of water a foot and a half high gushing straight up from behind the motor. I throttled back to neutral and went to the back of the boat to see the aluminum plate on my happy troller (still locked in the down position) was now bent at a 45 degree angle. I was able to raise the mechanism and bend the plate back enough to save the day, but not without knowing that I was putting on quite a display. At the end of the day we were back at the launch about to tie up when I heard a ghastly noise. I looked over at the boat next to us and saw a spinning propellor out of the water. The guy forgot to lower his outdrive. He just looked at me, shrugged his shoulders with a smile and said "oops". He lowered his drive and as he was passing by I said "In case you were wondering, it spins just fine." To err is human, to share err is divine. 