Redneck Roundy Round

My wife drug me out of bed at 8:00 AM. She said if the boat was in the garage I would have already been out there working on it. So we gathered our stuff and headed down to the boat. We have a thing here in SoCal called June Gloom. Its a "marine layer" that usually burns off between 10:00 and 12:00. But we committed to the restaurant manager that we would be back at 9:00 AM, so we were on time. Where we docked the boat is next to dock for the Catalina Flyer a commercial transport that runs from Newport Beach to Avalon on Catalina Island on daily schedule. The flyer leaves at 9:00 AM, so there we were with 500 people staring at our 53 year old 15' boat from this multimillion dollar 100 foot 3 level catamaran. The little Scott fired right up and we were off for another day of cruising.

We had been out for about an hour and when we were crossing the Yacht Basin. I opened up throttle a little to keep up with traffic and the motor started to die! I was wondering what was happening everything was running so nicely. I considered heading back to the Dunes to load up the boat. My wife asked "do we have fuel?" I responded "Yes, we put gas in last night!". We took the boat to the public pier at the end of our street and I was perplexed. I pulled the hood and fiddled around with the idle adjustment. I started the motor a couple times and it choked out. Then the batteries started getting a little tired and the boat wouldn't start.

I finally agreed that maybe the 1" of fuel in the bottom of the tank might not be enough. I figured at the very least I'd walk down the 4 blocks to get more fuel and that would give the batteries time to recover. I saw the kid who helped us last night and bought another 4 gallons of gas. A gallon of gas (or less) doesn't weigh much, 5 gallons does. When I got back my wife asked where I went and asked why I didn't get gas from the fuel dock that was 2 blocks closer. (Yes I actually walked past a fuel dock. She is a great 1st mate but I have authority issues.) With more fuel and a few minutes to rest the batteries, the Scott started right up. Maybe she was right. The Scott likes fuel, we are burning about 2 gallons an hour at 2000 RPM speeds.

We proceeded to cruise the harbor around and around for next 4 hours. We fueled twice, got take-out pizza for lunch on the boat and waved a many passers-by who would give us the thumbs-up. We even saw a '68 Dorsett who we waved at and shouted greetings as we passed by. Basically we spent five hours driving in circles. Since we named her Whisky Tango I decided that we were going to rename the Harbor Cruise the Redneck Roundy Round.

We have plans to keep the Dorsett at a friends dock on the weekends but still he had another friends boat tied up, so At about 2 PM I suggested we take her over to the Dunes and pull her out of the water to give her a fresh-water bath inside and out. So my 1st Mate reluctantly agreed. Later she figured out that I was sun-burnt and was ready to get out of the sun (and yes my neck is red). So I dropped her off and she met me at the Dunes with the trailer. We loaded up the Dorsett and chatted with a car-collector who was at the Dunes for the Russo and Steele Collector Automobile Auctions. He was a boat mechanic when he was a young man and fondly remembers working on the old Scott motors. You meet the nicest people when you have a cool old boat.

We brought her home and gave her a full wash and ran her in fresh water for 15 minutes to flush the motor. My wife looked at me and said... "I've had more fun that last two days, why did we wait so long (25 years) to get a boat?" I guess that's what its all about.