New boat Project

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That's a great upgrade Rusty, well done mate, clearly you enjoy your 🎣 and boating 🚢 so you'll certainly get your money and time worths for your efforts. 🍻 from Dave
 
And to answer you Macka i priced a new engine and would not get any change from $18000.00 the Dragon lady told me to go do myself, so after a long look over 13 months i found the engine on the back which is a 200 hp optimax with only 387 hrs from new and i paid $8000.00 these motors are good for over 2000 hrs if looked after, this motor was one of 2 off a abolone boat, so in my opinion i got a bargain and it will see me out for few years or so.
the stainless bolts and nuts i purchased have gone up by almost 100% in the last few weeks as an example a 1" x 1/4" unc countersunk screw and i needed 64 for the fuel tank lid were .65c each when i started this project 13 months ago, i bought them last week and they cost $1.20 each add that to all the various other bolts nuts and washers, plus stainless pop rivots, i have now spent and extra $250.00 over what i budgetted for in the begining, my biggest worry now is fuel, its not like when i was commercial fishing 30 years ago where i got 50% rebated back from the customs, in Esperance its $2.25 p/l multiply that by 250 and i am shitting myself.
 
Great buy on the motor mate and the one thing i know about toys is they cost. The number of boats, caravans, jetski‘s that i see every day sitting on front lawns, in carports etc is mindblowing the amount of money sitting there doing nothing week after week and month after month. At $2.25 for fuel well that maybe cheap in the months, years ahead imo and even if the gov’t 40c per litre tax is taken off, it won’t be long before the owner of the pump puts the prices up to take a double share. My prediction is $2.50-$3.00 by the end of the year . Buy your $500 bucks worth of fuel and enjoy a piece of fish, after all you did save $10,000 on the motor. Cheers Mackka
 
Final update on the big canoe, well we have now shifted to geraldton as its closer to the Pilbara by almost 1250 kms from here, plus big plus the crayfish are off the scale and apart from the plonker minster turning the amatuer fishing lifestyle into almost as bad as if comrade Putin was running the show, anyways enough of that, i finished the boat up here in Geraldton after doing 6 trips back and forwards from Esperance to Geraldton,the medical faciltys and shopping leaves Espy for dead, we used to travel to either perth of Kalgoorlie to do both and as the Dragon and i hit 70 this year the good move was done.plus housing is cheaper here!
The Boat has now done quite few trips out off here (25hrs) for the usual Fare , Dhufish, Baldchin Groper, Pink Snapper, and even the odd Coral Trout, the Crayfish are next level here, over the winter months we regularlly came in with our bag limt of 24 between myself and my son and grandson, we pulled out the pots after 8 weeks over winter as we got sick of them and re-put them in early December before Xmas for the white cray run, after 3 weeks we had close to 200 caught and again pulled them out, the boat goes great and surprising is quite economical as at full throttle its uses around 40 to 50 litres of petrol (5800 rpm) whereas at cruise speed 3300 rpm it uses 30 litres per hr and is doing just shy of 24 knots, flat out is does 41 knots by the gps and scares me a bit, The fuel tank also scares me at 241 litres to fill which equates to around $450.00. Sadley i am very happy with it, only problem i have now as my bloody age is against me and the dragon and myself cannot put it in or even pull it out on our own as its to big.I am going to sell it and get a smaller 4 m tinny hopefull as most of the best fishing is close in to shore, anyways enough dribble here are pics as it stands now, main additions are a 12 volt capstan winch and craypot tipper.
Hope everyone likes it as we do and will miss it.
 

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Up date on the big boat after our seachange and shift to Geraldton it was decided we did not really require such a large boat so we sold it and i beleive its now in QLD, I bought in partnership with my youngest son a 5m aluminium runabout with a Honda outboard on the back it has all the bells and whistles and because of what we made on the large boat i was able to buy the dragon a new GPX 6000, Plus i up graded the van to Lithium batteries. after a recent test run to Esperance and back to see son numer one i am stoked with the Lithiums (2 x 200ahr units), now i can put the smaller boat in the water just as footnote on my own with dragon girl and we have been slaying the whiting which makes my days when not detecting.
 

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