We broke the boats duck but...

[Coneman]

Hi guys,

we eventually made it out in Jasper on Saturday and finally managed to land 3 fish.... Even though they were only 1 small pollock and 2 small doggies they were the first fish we have caught since buying the boat.

Unfortunately, things didn't go as planned (do they ever?) we originally wanted to motor out to south of selsey bill, catch lots of fish, stay overnight on IOW and fish sunday by Nab tower but the boat decided otherwise

When we first got the boat the previous owners explained that they had fitted a heat exchanger, in the engine cooling system, onto the exhaust manifold to heat the engine up faster, and also provide enough heat to run a domestic radiator in the cabin for winter fishing. Although this worked a treat as far as the radiator went, it did cause the engine to run hot at high revs so we had only run at 3/4 throttle up to this weekend

Not being nancy boys, we decided we would rather have speed than heat so duly by-passed the exchanger on friday, looking forward to a good head of speed for saturday/sundays fishing....... Boy were we dissapointed

The boat is a 21'6" pilot house lookalike with a 1.8 marinised ford diesel (astra van) driving through a (unknown make) stern drive. Although the prop looks its age (10 years) we had thoroughly cleaned it up, along with the hull, when we had the boat lifted out at christmas so I was looking for about 10-12 knots max cruising speed

Unfortunately, the maximum we were able to get out of it was 6.5kts +/- tide. This meant that, starting from R.Itchen, after 4 hours motoring at max throttle we were still only opposite Portsmouth... . as it would still have taken us an hour or so to selsey, I changed course and we went to nab rock where the duck was broken with the pollock. Then, as all accom on IOW was fully booked, we motored back to peel bank and had 2 hours fishing in the dark (the boat is well lit at least) where we caught the 2 doggies.

Am I right in thinking the engine/prop combination is wrong for the boat ? What speed should i expect from that hull/engine?

Any thoughts gratefully received

John

[monkey nuts]

hi john
sounds like dirty fuel / filters or air filter
what revs were you pulling ?????