Top Speed Of Our Boat?

[LuvBoating]

I merely follow the instructions in my Mercruiser manual. They say AF for added protection, so I put in AF. I really don't know what marinas do for I/Os since I wouldn't trust one to do something as simple as winterizing.

Anywhoot, now that I'm in my 70's I don't do any of that crap. We switched to MPI outboards in 2017 and winterizing is non-existent.

Would love to have a boat with EFI, but if something happens to the EFI, it's expensive to repair. Get in the boat, turn the key to start and bingo..........engine starts. With carburetor , if boat hasn't been started for awhile, it can be hard.

BTW, a marina didn't do our winterizing, a marine service, next door to the dry storage we were at in Florida did it. A regular marine service here does it.

 

[JimS123]

Would love to have a boat with EFI, but if something happens to the EFI, it's expensive to repair. Get in the boat, turn the key to start and bingo..........engine starts. With carburetor , if boat hasn't been started for awhile, it can be hard.

BTW, a marina didn't do our winterizing, a marine service, next door to the dry storage we were at in Florida did it. A regular marine service here does it.

Yeah, no kidding. My first year with the big Black Max Merc was awesome. On our first time out we were docking at our local cafe for dinner and when I popped it into neutral to coast to the dock I said: "Oh no, crap, this brand new thing stalled on me". Looking down, the tach showed idle and the pee hole was pumping. Its so quiet and vibration free that you can't tell its running.

The following Spring we put it back in the water and when I turned the key it was "click....zoom" with a fraction of a second in between.

Cost is of no object to me. I've been a boater for 66 years. My earliest recollection was sitting next to my Grandpa holding his hand on the tiller. If I don't spend it now, my heirs will surely blow it by buying a bigger boat for themselves.

Reliability is also of no concern. My favorite fishing spot is view of the mist from Niagara Falls. I have had a kicker since 1968. She only pushes us at 6.5 mph, so we might get home a little late, but who can complain if the boat ride lasts all day....LOL.

Banner year. The wife lost her job and her business due to covid, plus it was record heat. Being in the boat was the best option. 26 trips so far this year, but its only September.

 

[tpenfield]

While we are waiting for the old gasoline to be used up . . .

I will say that EFI engines are great . . . They work well until they don't. Then it can be a challenge to diagnose and repair them. Sometimes even the 'pros' can't figure out the problem.

I have the first generation Mercruiser 454 MPI engines (multiport injected). Instead of spending $500 on tune-up parts every time I ran into a problem, I bought the PC software to diagnose the engines. . . makes nice charts of the engine parameters too.

After 8 years of ownership, this year was the first time one of the engines would not start. Of course the computer said it was fine . . . just didn't run Going through the basics . . . fuel, compression, spark . . . it was missing spark.

New distributor . . . it started right up. :thumb:

 

[JimS123]

My last job gave me a cellphone and I was required to reply 24/7/365 even if on vacation. So, when I retired I resisted having a phone. Then, after finding out that Mercury offered a half price deal on VesselView, I bought 2 modules, one for the family boat and one for the fishing boat. Both my boats have Ram Mounts on the dash that hold my cell.

The first time out after configuring them I picked up a plastic bag on the lower unit. Can't see that crap in the water, right? My cell started beeping at me, I saw the temp going up, so I shut her down. Raised the engine and saw the bag falling off.

Picked up the flotsam and after restarting the engine the temp went right back down to 120. Punched her and hit 5300 rpm and still at 120. Gotta love computers.

When I was writing computer code back in 1967 on a mainframe that was bigger than my house, I would never have imagined that we would come this far.

Reliable or not, anyone want to go back to points and condenser?

 

[tpenfield]

. . . 1967

So you probably were saying things back then like Fortran, Basic, Pascal, Cobol, Assembly, PL/I, JCL

I have a deck of punch cards somewhere in my attic

 

[JimS123]

. . . 1967

So you probably were saying things back then like Fortran, Basic, Pascal, Cobol, Assembly, PL/I, JCL

I have a deck of punch cards somewhere in my attic

Don't even want to think about it...LOL. My senior project had so many cards that it took 2 briefcases to carry them all. Gotta love PLCs.

 

[LuvBoating]

Sure are glad that we didn't take the boat out yesterday (Wed. 9-30). Lots of wildfire smoke smell starting at 3AM. Could cut thru it with a knife! Just after noon, the smoke smell lightened up, but it was only about 62 degrees.........too cold for us to go out. But, we did drive over to the lake and could smell some smoke there. Could see some smoke in the foothills, but couldn't see the peaks of the Rockies beyond the foothills. So very, very glad we decided not to go.

Be very upsetting if we would have gone over to storage, hooked up the boat, drove to local state park/lake and then find out there was smoke smell there and have to turn around and go back to storage. Just because there was very little-to-no smoke smell at our apartment and none at storage, sure doesn't mean there wouldn't be any at the lake.

Next opportunity to go out will be next Monday. Temps next week will be around 10 degrees warmer than now. With good temps, all we can hope for is no smoke smell.

 

[GA_Boater]

While waiting for the smoke to clear and the temps to warm up - How about ALGOL and machine code?

 

[LuvBoating]

While waiting for the smoke to clear and the temps to warm up - How about ALGOL and machine code?

Hugh?????

 

[JimS123]

While waiting for the smoke to clear and the temps to warm up - How about ALGOL and machine code?

At my advanced age I have CRS syndrome. The doctor says its unavoidable and the wife says its too much beer.

By the mid '70's I transferred to the process end, working on mechanical hardware. My team developed the final process that enabled quantification of every unit operation. Our first PLC went in mid '80's. By then IT was a separate department made up of mostly youngins. Soon after I was responsible for writing Instruction manuals, hence my deep respect for Owner's Manuals.

None of our stuff ran on gasoline. Some were on #2, but by the '90's NG and heat recovery were everywhere, reducing our energy footprint by more than half. 5 year old #2 was no problem, and it didn't even need Stabil....LOL.

Spent the weekend at camp burning leaves and fallen kindling from the previous storm. My nose is a little sooty but the steaks cooked on an open wood fire made it all worthwhile.

 

[GA_Boater]

Hugh?????

Just passing time while reading this dismal thread.

Who is Hugh? Hugh Downs or Hugh O'Brien? Maybe Hugh Jackson or Hugh Hefner? I dunno.

 

[tpenfield]

Yes, while we wait for the smoke in the Rockies to clear . . .

I learned Fortran and COBOL in the mid-1970's (at college) running on an IBM 360 Mainframe that we affectionately named "Fat Albert". Once I got into the business world (1980's), I learned Basic, dBase/Foxpro, some UNIX scripting, and a whole bunch of SQL and relational database stuff.

From there, I worked less on programming code and more on packaged software for business and manufacturing. Eventually became 'certified' in production & inventory control systems. I haven't touched programming code in a couple of decades.

Now my IT world is all about project plans, budgets, organization structure, cyber security, and technology initiatives. :noidea:

Never worked with "Hugh" though. Not sure what department he was in . . .

 

[JimS123]

Hugh?????

The topic evolved toward EFI and how well they work and how neat it is today that a simple cellphone can access the engine computer and all of the interesting data that it contains.

Then it evolved into nostalgia about computer programming in the old days. The acronyms and terms that are "huh" are old types of computer language. Only a computer geek (and an old one at that) would know what they mean. Wiki has good explanations.

As an aside, my Mercury VesselView and my cellphone showed me that the tach on my dashboard ain't worth a crap. At WOT it's off by 600 rpm.

 

[roffey]

I said to my self, self this thread is way to long and has gone on forever. I can't help my self so here goes, completely unrelated to the OP and his question about speed, that was answered in the first page.... I started working on mainframe computers in 1981.. worked my way through a bunch of IT jobs and a stint at Nortel as a network engineer, contracting, consulting and where am I now, mainframe computers and JCL is my bread and butter and code it every day or at least fix it every day, lol. They say the more things change the more they stay the same...

 

[tpenfield]

It is nice to hear and share stories about IT careers, while we wait for progress updates on the boat.

I believe the OP was also an IT guy before retiring.

 

[Scott Danforth]

the guy we have managing our network/software/hardware/infrastructure aspires to be the tittle in the "i" in IT.

The folks in a prior life not only managed the company IT, the engineering LAN, one of them hosted his own web service for the small community he lived in.

 

[MRS]

I caught a fish yesterday opcorn:

 

[LuvBoating]

It is nice to hear and share stories about IT careers, while we wait for progress updates on the boat.

I believe the OP was also an IT guy before retiring.

Nope, not in IT. My main career was in warehousing, purchasing and inventory management. Enlisted in the Navy, before the Draft could get me, right before high school graduation in '68. That we just the right time, because I got my Draft Notice when I was a Navy Basic Training in Great Lakes, IL.. Stationed onboard a Destroyer in a Destroyer Escort Group at 32nd St. in San Diego. First Vietnam/WestPac Cruise started in Dec. 1968.

Other jobs were: EMT in Los Angeles/Orange County, Electronics Stockroom Supervisor, Horseback Trail Guide in a Regional Park and a weekend rodeo cowboy (roper). Started using my first computer in 1989. Loved working in Purchasing/Inventory Management and having an office. Definitely NOT the "manual labor" type guy. Been there, done that.........no thanks!

 

[LuvBoating]

Our plan right now, is to put the boat on the water next week, preferably Monday...........if (big "if") there is no smoke smell going on. Will try to get as much of that old gas out of the tank as possible.

Now, if we could find a gas station that sold non-ethanol gas, we'd buy it there. Only one station that had that in Jacksonville, FL, but they ended up stop selling it. Our local state park/lake marina, that had one pump of non-ethanol gas, is closed for the season.

 

[tpenfield]

I caught a fish yesterday opcorn:

I've only been fishing once in my life . . . Long, long ago . . . When I was working summers while in college for a small electronics manufacturing company as a test & repair guy on new piece of hi-tech audio equipment . . . the head tech guy said . . . "hey let's all take tomorrow off and go fishing?" . . . Sure :thumb:

We cleared it with the big boss and went out of Gloucester, MA on a 30-something foot fishing boat . . . looked more like a lobster boat to me :noidea:

Anyway, we did 'bottom fishing' with a drop line. I caught the biggest fish of the day :thumb: I think it was a Cod (what else would it be :noidea: )

The weather was dead calm and the seas were flat, but one of the guys still managed to get sea sick I was surprised he did not know about that, but maybe he just wanted to come on the trip regardless.

I might have worked there the following summer and got more fishing trips, but I ended up getting a real job as an industrial engineer at a computer manufacturer.