A little late on my first report for my first trip out on the new boat.
Anyway, some might recall me asking for info. on buying my first boat, i opted for a Seahog Sea Jeep in the end, 1999 model fitted with a 40hp Suzuki 2T motor, Snipe trailer and pretty much all the extras, aux motor, vhf/dsc radio, gps, fishfinder, safety gear etc. I named her Emma-J (after the Mrs)
Since buying her, i have gone over her completely, rectifying all the little problems and things i didn't like or wanted to change and finally had her ready enough for me to be happy enough to launch her on Friday 6th April.
We decided to launch from Orford Quay, arrived there at 8.30am, in the water by 9.30am with a totally uneventful launch (good lol), the tide was completely out by that time, got underway and headed up the River Ore for a mark kindly provided by a WSF member, but it wasn't many minutes before i realised the fishfinder wasn't working too well & i had no or intermittent depth readings, so was a little concerned at that, as it was my first launch with this boat and my first launch on ANY boat into tidal waters, after a load of fiddling with settings, i got the depth readings working ok, we arrived at what we thought was the mark at about 10.30am, set up the rods and spent an hour or so fishing and caught 3 undersize codling, i then decided to move on further and head for the sea proper, the main aim of the trip was really to check out the boat, fishing was just a bonus.
I thought i'd just head out of the end of the river and just have a chug about and see how i got on, well, me and Emma-J got on very well, so i ended up chugging out a bit farther
i headed out to the SW Whiting Buoy, the sea was getting a lot choppier, quite quickly, but Emma-J handled it just fine and got the the mark without a problem, anchored 50yds or so from the buoy and fished for a little while, but the choppy sea was just a bit uncomfortable, so reeled in to find another small codling and headed back for the shelter of the river to the first mark, anchored there and fished again for a while, caught one more small codling, then headed back to the slipway.
Recovered Emma-J without a problem, with the help of my Mrs and 13yr old son Chris, who were both with me for the trip, we all had a brilliant first trip out, almost without a problem.
The only probs were the fishfinder not working too well, which i'm now trying to fix, or i'll have to buy a new one and the outboard is a manual start and i didn't like all the pulling
i'm going to look into the possibility of converting it to an electric start, if not, i'll have to try to save for an upgrade maybe.
A big thanks to all the people that gave help and advice to me on WSF, especially Norrie, who sent me some invaluable books and videos to help me out and The Hogster who advised me on launching at Orford and some marks to fish, I bought Salar's book "Angling Boats" which was a great help, me, the mrs and my son all read the book and learned a great deal, that all helped make things easier and safer, cheers Salar.
I thought this would be a short report
Anyway, i can't wait to take Emma-J out again soon, hopefully she'll be 100% finished then, although i doubt she'll ever be 100% finished, i have a feeling there will ALWAYS be something that NEEDS doing or i WANT to do.
Cheers all.
AL ..
