Popeye The Sailor Man - First Trailer | Conor McGregor, Margot Robbie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRFImT5oi0Q

Looking for advice. I'm taking my family (my wife, my infant daughter, my brother, my mom, my dad and my dog) to a lake near where I live and considering renting a 20' open bow powerboard. I have very little experience operating boats (neither does anyone in my family). I have been on other people's boats and may have briefly taken the wheel once or twice, but have never been the primary boat operator.

Here is a photo of the boat I'm planning to rent.
https://imgur.com/a/8mGzFbT

My general sense from the few times I have briefly driven boats is that they are fairly straightforward to drive. The rental place also makes you take a boat safety course before renting the boat. I found a course online and plan to take it.

Experienced boaters, is what I'm planning to do safe? Is it as easy to pick up as I think it is, or am I kidding myself and just putting my family in danger?

Forgot about the support poles for the cover and this is the result. Wont be able to do anything with it for a few days due to work. Will the water hurt the boat in anyway?

Hi! We are moving our Carolina Skiff 178DLV from Key West to Maine, and curious if we should plan more for lake boating or if the skiff would do ok in the bay? Not planning to use much more than island hopping, relaxing and maybe occasional fishing on either body of water. Thanks in advance!

Finally got rid of 75k student loan debt so I want to punish myself, I mean reward myself with a boat.

Id be a first time owner. I've got 6k in cash I can part with immediately but financing isn't out of the question, i'd rather not go wild. Are there new(ish) boats for 12-15k? I'm looking for something to hit nearby rivers and lakes in north west Florida area, maybe everglades.

14-15 feet (18 feet clearance) with a center console, decent motor to push 2.5 people primarily for fishing, and trolling motor.

Any recommendations, roast me if you have to

I have a 5.7L mercruiser that won’t start. It ran last November when i winterized it, however I did have trouble with the carb and could only get it on if I manually controlled the throttle and messed with the carb. I opened it up yesterday, changed the oil, spark plugs, wires, and it has a new battery. When i go to start it will crank but won’t start. I sprayed gas in the carb and still nothing. I checked that the spark plugs were getting a spark and they were not so I took apart the HEI distributor and changed the ignition module. Now the spark plugs are getting a spark but still won’t start. Any ideas on how to get it going?

I got a 2021 21’ Cobia bay at a salvage auction for $11k. It had significant damage to the hull, T top and engine cowling. The engine ran great but had 800 hours as it was a freedom boat club boat. We repaired the fiber glass and I put a refurbished trolling motor on it and have been enjoying it for a year now. I recently had to replace the lower unit. It has 1000 hours on engine now. The repairs are solid but extremely visibly obvious.

My soon to be ex wife put it as worth $49k during mediation which is a joke but I don’t know how to get it appraised in a way the court would accept. Googling boat appraiser gives me weird spam looking results.

In the process of selling my boat. I live in Arkansas, where they did not title boats until 2020. The buyer lives in Texas, where they need a title to register it. I’ll have a bill of sale and manufactures statement of origin. Will this be enough for him to get a title? Not having any luck finding things online. Thanks

I've added an electric fuel pump, water fuel separator, replaced the carburetor, coil, intake manifold gasket and checked and adjusted the timing about 3 times. I'm not a novice mechanic but I've had two mechanics weigh in and when it starts and idles fine for 15 minuets they just charge me and send it back. It's only after it's been run hard on the lake for an hour or so that it just hates to idle. It'll bog and die and fire right back up (with a heavy dose of throttle) and run but has to be held about 1,250 RPM's or higher or it bogs and dies. Makes me think its too hot but I have a new impeller and have replaced the engine water pump and thermostat and the temp gage says it's happy at 170 degrees. Makes it impossible to get to a dock, transit no-wake zones, or get onto a trailer. Thank you.

I bought a float switch off of amazon, and it seems to require a fair amount of force upward to actually trigger. Its not a ridiculous amount of force, but Im picturing water gradually filling up a bilge, and i cant see it generating the kind of abrupt upward force seemingly needed to trigger this thing.

Should i return this one and buy a different brand, or are they all like this and i am over thinking it?

In-laws were selling their old (80’s) but immaculately maintained 26 foot Carver Santa Cruz. I told my wife to buy it off them but then they gave it to us. Big surprise.

So. Boater now! Worked on the water my whole life (marine engineer) but never owned anything more than an aluminum skiff. Didn’t think I wanted to. But we are over the top excited.

I am working overseas so can’t go out on it for a few weeks.

Would you guys know what kind of cruse speed and fuel consumption I can expect? I am ball-parking 20 knots at 20 gallons per hour? It has a 5.7 L inboard outboard.

Any savings just putting around or is the best economy to be at cruise?

New to us 1994 Maxum 2000SRB Eddie Bauer Edition. Boat in great shape although there is a tiny chip in the hull just above the waterline. What is best way to patch this?

Hello: I have (2) Garmin 94SV chartplotter's connected as host/client on my boat. I find that when I connect my android phone to the Garmin network, it shows connected but with no internet. I'm pretty sure there is an internet connection since I'm downloading software updates from Garmin with no problem. My problem is that when I connect my phone to the Garmin chartplotter network, I lose the connection to my JL Audio MM50 for music. If I disconnect the phone from the Garmin chartplotter network the JL audio MM50 works fine. Should I be able to connect the JL Audio MM50 directly to the Garmin chartplotter network via bluetooth? Thanks for the help.

I'm looking at getting my first boat. I live in the Miami area, and I found an early 2000s Hydra Sports 230 Seahorse with a newer (7 yrs old) Evinrude 2-stroke outboard. The boat is a couple hours away, but the price seems right (~$16,000) and the engine has less than 100 hours. I would be keeping the boat at a marina (wet slip) about an hour away. Does anyone have any suggestions as to whether this might be a good fit? The boat has older hummingbird electronics and doesn't have speakers. Any comments or suggestions would be very welcome. I understand many of the costs of owning the boat (insurance, marina fees, maintenance, etc.), but I want to also see if I'm missing anything.

I just got my first boat with AC in the cabin, and a lot of other boats at marina keep their AC running full-time it seems like when on shore power, but the guy I got it from really never used that unless they were sleeping on it. I'd like to run it full-time to keep the moisture down in there, and power is included with the price I paid for the dock, I'm just not sure if there's something I'm missing as to whether or not I should just let it run or shut it down when I leave it.

What style of anchor would be best for a 17ft fishing boat? I tried the 15 lb mushroom anchor but it doesn’t work too well whenever the wind speed is over 5 mph.

2005 Rinker 320 we've enjoyed for two years but it has a persistant oily odor in the cabin and on the deck after the canvas has been closed up for a day or two. I've tried cleaning out the engine compartment with simple green and WM bilge cleaner with only a little improvement. I've also put oil absorbing mats and cylinders with little help. Has anyone here had the same problem and solved it?

Hey all,

I just bought a boat and trying to repair some things on my own. The switch panel on my boat works. There’s 6 total switches to turn on nav lights, bilge pump, accessories etc. The top 3 switches work perfectly fine. The bottom 3 don’t work at all, but one of the bottom ones will sometimes turn on after switching the button really fast to the on and off position (sometimes 10+) and then it will work. I’m trying to figure out the problem on my own before I make a call to have someone come and fix it, but am not getting very far. I am not to experienced with electrical and just trying to figure out if this may be a problem with the switch, connection issue, or a fuse problem. All fuses seem to be in good shape.

Any help with a solution to this problem or some advice what this could be would be awesome.

Wife's dream was owning a ski boat. last fall due to an amazing deal on a great condition 80s custom craft ski nautique, we got one. i proceeded to panic. i knew nothing about boats, let alone basic engines nor how they worked. And the first boat we have is a nautique?!?!

this post is to say: we fucking did it

the last 6 months of learning haven't been easy. foremost, when we acquired the boat, I was assuming that the FIL (who is a 30+ year boater) would teach me the ropes of all things boating: how to back up a trailer, how to launch, how to trailer, how to maintain the engine, etc.

great guy... but looking back, I was given a lot of bad help. And eventually I decided to just "do learn it myself."

i.e. he informed me he didn't know how to back up a trailer in my passenger seat after I asked him to "show me how its done" after arriving home with it the first day.. taught us to unhook the winch/safety prior to backing down the ramp... power loaded the ski boat & almost sent it into our truck bed... and many more things i laugh about to myself now

so i started nodding along to advice, taking it with a grain of salt, and then went and read online/manuals/videos of all things.

the last 6 months I have done the following all by myself:

• winterized the engine (then de-winterized)
• winterize/stabilized the fuel tank
• changed the oil & oil filter
• fixed the deathly low transmission fluid the previous owner forgot existed
• replaced the impeller
• fixed speedometers
• fixed fuel sending unit (fuel gauge)
• fixed exhaust hose
• added trailer spare tire
• learned how to hook up hose as water supply to start it in the driveway

THEN, I learned how to drive and back a trailer up. Not just straight, but back it 90degs into our driveway & garage without needing to move my other car out of the garage. ALL BY MY SELF. (0 help as noted above hahaha)

THEN, wife and I learned how to launch a boat THE RIGHT WAY (see above lol) and my wife became an expert at trailering it WITHOUT power driving it through the bed of the truck.

today we successfully took the boat out for the first time this spring and did it all ourselves.

the drive there, the launch of the boat, and the smoooooth gliding of her maneuvering it back onto the trailer with ease and care. Everything went perfect, after 6-months of... not so perfect things, frustration, me making mistakes, and a little bad advice.

###Here she is - next up: learning how to clean the hull.

Also the old seal is stuck to the metal, what’s the best way to remove that?