Jet Boat

[spenaroo]

ever get bored so start browsing facebook marketplace.....

well I do, and occasionally I find something that sticks in my mind.

this was one of those. found it one night and shared it with my brother thinking it was cool listed at 3k.

saw it a few weeks later still up but dropped to 2.5k - and made an "I can lose this money and still be okay" offer that was rejected.
then after a bit more thinking decided I would kick myself if I missed out and upped the offer to split the difference and succeeded in negotiations for 1.5k - without ever seeing it...

 

that Friday it followed me home

Edited September 27 by spenaroo

[spenaroo]

besides the cool factor, and the uniqueness (thought I wouldn't find another - If i didn't take this opportunity)
there was some logic to this.

 

Its a home built (1990's is mine and the sellers guess) mini jet boat. 3.5m in length. ply construction

it is powered by a 750 Kawasaki 2 stroke engine.

this was a large reason for my purchasing of it - while I intend to restore it, I have a Kawasaki 650sx jet ski, that runs the earlier version of this engine (bolt in replacement)
so I can use it as a spare for that. and I figured the trailer would be worth a few hundred - so my negotiations were based on the worst case wrecked value to me.

the Engine stared and ran off start you bastard - which was enough for me. figured it would need a carb rebuild or crank seals after sitting for so long anyway (seller reckoned 4 years, but last rego was 2012)

Started the process of stripping the hull.
overall its in good shape, a few spots patched with fiberglass (that hasn't been blended properly) and some small patched of wood rot from water soaking. but nothing that isn't easily repairable.

Edited September 27 by spenaroo

[nomadpete]

Look on the bright side....

 

With a project like this you won't have time to waste  scrolling through ads for stuff you don't need....

[facthunter]

Been on a big one of those on the Dart River, South Shakey Island.  Nev

[onetrack]

Well, at least you've got no worries about damaging expensive props or propshafts on underwater obstructions!

 

The nephews bought a Skicraft ski boat about 1985, it was a gorgeous beast, red metalflake and 350 Chev.

I was tooling up the Swan River in it one sunny day, at a low speed (8kts is the River speed limit), about 600 or 800 metres upstream from the Maylands Yacht Club.

Not far off the centre of the River, I hit something in the River with an almighty BANG and thump. Straightaway, I had a driveshaft vibration. I returned to the boat ramp and inspection found a damaged prop and a bent driveshaft!

To this day, I still have no idea what I hit. Possibly a large submerged tree stump? There were no markers in the area, but it was just outside the navigation channel. The Swan River isn't very deep in many places.

 

We did get a lot of pleasure out of that boat, but I gave up waterskiing around age 41, after incurring too many torn lower back tendons from mostly deepwater starts. That 350 Chev had some grunt.

I think the most fun I had with it, we had a circular flat disc of 10mm Marine ply, and we'd use that as skiboard.

 

You couldn't get over about 12-14 kts with it, the friction on the water surface was too high, and the boat would pull you off it. But you could do lots of low-speed trickery with it.

One of the tricks was carrying a wooden kitchen chair with you, you'd get up on the piece of ply, then swing the chair under you, and sit on it! - skiing neatly along, sitting like a monarch on their throne! 🙂

[spenaroo]

Yeah,

 

we had a Stirling Monza, called "Tequila Sunrise" covered in orange and gold flake with a straight piped 350 chev,
absolutely gorgeous boat. which was sold when the family got a Malibu Wake-setter (Big wake boat, bought to have 10 people on board with the extra generation of family)
still a regret by my father - he reckons he never got to give it a proper goodbye. brother sold it before the Malibu was delivered.

The Malibu while practical is just an appliance to me, it lacks any soul. 
and with the swap to a houseboat instead of beach as a home base. My stand up jetski is never put in the water...
as its a 500m stretch of marina at walking speeds to get to the river.
plus my Brother tends to fill the Malibu and go out for 3 hours at a time....

id often leave the days upset and frustrated as I couldn't enjoy the parts I enjoyed growing up. 

which was socializing with everyone and swapping between boats/skis etc.. 

so I thought I would give this a try, give an option of a second boat for those who like me don't want to spend 3 hours suck on the wake boat.

or are stuck on the houseboat due to timing/space etc...

and be easy for a 10 minute blast here and there through the day.

apparently there has been some skis/knee-boards behind it. so be interesting to see if I can get up behind it

Im not expecting much performance from the little 750cc

 

The Malibu:

 

and "Tequila"

Edited September 27 by spenaroo

[Litespeed]

Good to see I am not alone in the water loving disease.

 

Looks like great fun.

[spacesailor]

Are they " Hamlton " jets .They had the patent rights . But the Chinese seem to get around those, easily. 

spacesailor

 

[red750]

As they say, a boat is a hole in the water to throw money in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Litespeed]

BOAT...bring out another thousand

[old man emu]

16 hours ago, red750 said:

As they say, a boat is a hole in the water to throw money in.

Hang the expense! Give the cat another goldfish. It's a SKI boat, a means of spending the kids' inheritance.

[nomadpete]

27 minutes ago, old man emu said:

It's a SKI boat, a means of spending the kids' inheritance.

Yeah, that's what my boat is.

As a caring father I am doing everything in my power  to ensure my kids don't fight over any inheritance from me.

[facthunter]

Boats have a strong fascination for me but not those infectious Cruisey things where you just put on weight and catch diseases or high speed expensive things that get airborne and cost the  earth.  When I was young, a mate of mine had a tug boat Captain father operating out of Newcastle. (NSW). Great experience to go out into the rough and bring a big ship in. Nev

[willedoo]

I spent a year as a deckhand on a prawn trawler which was an experience. Working the shallow water in the summer months was tiring. Lots of short shots and not much sleep. The deep water season was a lot easier with longer shots and time to have a  bit of a sleep between shots. During the deep water season we had enough fuel to stay out about six nights before coming home but the shallow water was daytime work within sight of land and we'd go back to port every day. It wasn't a big boat, a timber 45' wet boat with a very noisy GM 671 bird scarer powering it. You spent most of your time damp, tired and smelling of sea creatures but it had it's good points. Like watching all the leaping dolphins silhouetted by the rising sun as you steamed toward the reef to anchor up for the day with all the seagulls forming an overhead escort. Another good sight was those rare days when the ocean was a mill pond. It's a strange sight being miles out to see and water like glass with not a trace of a ripple. The water would have a silky effect as you cut through it.

[willedoo]

1 hour ago, facthunter said:

Boats have a strong fascination for me but not those infectious Cruisey things where you just put on weight and catch diseases or high speed expensive things that get airborne and cost the  earth.  When I was young, a mate of mine had a tug boat Captain father operating out of Newcastle. (NSW). Great experience to go out into the rough and bring a big ship in. Nev

Nev, you would have liked to have been with us in the early 1970's when myself and a couple of other blokes got a guided tour aboard a big roll on/roll off ship unloading in Brisbane. It was during the cement strike and we were there picking up loads of Tasmanian cement from a local freighter. It was a slow day with the wharfies continually stopping, so we wandered down the dock to have a look at the big ship. As we were standing there looking up at it, the ship's 2IC (1st officer?) approached us and invited us aboard. He gave us a fairly comprehensive tour through the ship, including the officer's mess, the galley and down on the cargo decks. The highlight was when he took us into the huge engine room to see the three great big engines. From there we went up up to a mezzanine deck which was the engine control/instrument room. It was a fairly new state of the art ship at the time and belonged to a Scandinavian/Australian company.

 

It was built as a roll on/roll off vehicle transporter and had a full load of Mercedes Benz cars. It was controlled mayhem unloading it with swags of drivers ferrying cars out from multiple decks with traffic control people with stop/go signs directing them.

[facthunter]

I can recall I think just after the War ended, visiting and having a conducted tour over an aircraft Carrier in Newcastle.  Nev

[rgmwa]

2 hours ago, willedoo said:

Another good sight was those rare days when the ocean was a mill pond. It's a strange sight being miles out to see and water like glass with not a trace of a ripple. The water would have a silky effect as you cut through it.

In 2020 I drove from Portland, Vic to Melbourne along the Great Ocean Road in a day. The ocean was flat calm all the way out to the horizon for the whole trip. Not a ripple or even a shore break. It looked like a lake. I've never seen anything like it. A very rare day for Bass Strait.

[red750]

[onetrack]

We used to waterski on Lake Dumbleyung when I lived in the W.A. wheatbelt. Lake Dumbleyung is a salt lake, but when it fills every few years, it gets quite deep, about 4.6M (15 feet). It's 13kms long and 6.5kms wide, so it's a big lake.

We'd get out there early on a Sunday morning and the wind would not yet be up, and the lake would be a complete millpond.

So you'd be skiing along on this stunningly dead-flat sheet of water, like skating on an ice rink - it was absolutely magic.

[pmccarthy]

6 hours ago, rgmwa said:

In 2020 I drove from Portland, Vic to Melbourne along the Great Ocean Road in a day. The ocean was flat calm all the way out to the horizon for the whole trip. Not a ripple or even a shore break. It looked like a lake. I've never seen anything like it. A very rare day for Bass Strait.

If that was during the Covid panic, the other thing missing was the hordes of Asian tourists driving badly.

[spenaroo]

On 28/09/2024 at 7:17 PM, onetrack said:

We used to waterski on Lake Dumbleyung when I lived in the W.A. wheatbelt. Lake Dumbleyung is a salt lake, but when it fills every few years, it gets quite deep, about 4.6M (15 feet). It's 13kms long and 6.5kms wide, so it's a big lake.

We'd get out there early on a Sunday morning and the wind would not yet be up, and the lake would be a complete millpond.

So you'd be skiing along on this stunningly dead-flat sheet of water, like skating on an ice rink - it was absolutely magic.

yeah we call those the bug runs.... as they also enjoy that time out.
but they are the absolute best times for it

[spenaroo]

Started painting it,

Looked great in the epoxy sealant from a distance 

unfortunately though there was still plenty of damage and old paint in gaps to be hidden.

 

So started the new paint job 

it's a little bright.

but using a 2 pack marine paint.

with a brush, seems to be thick enough to self level

[spenaroo]

It lives, finished the painting.

 

 

Rebuilt the carburettor... think I found the fuelling issue.

 

 

And the proceeded to smoke my house out with the test start.

 

Note for future, don't leave the door open with a 2 stroke exhaust pointing to it

[onetrack]

I saw a good name on a boat today - "In A Meeting". I reckon another good one would be "My Way". When you get a call, and the caller asks, "Where are ya?", you could honestly say, "I'm on My Way!" 😄

[spacesailor]

My Australian ' registered 'yacht , mywayn .

In Australia you have to put the prefix of your state at the end of your registered name I wanted the port to be " Botany Bay " Australia. 

But had to settle for Sydney Australia.  

spacesailor