- Fleet's back up to 2
Mal was kind enough to do the first mod for me, that being the anchor trolley.
Like my Revo the cleats on the rear storage area have been replaced with pad eyes. Not a fan of the cleats.
I spent the first day figuring out what I wanted to do to the yak. I actually stopped by a marine shop on the way home to pick up a sounder but they were out of stock for the model I was chasing, which in hindsight is a good thing because I'll wait till I've got a bit more disposal cash lying around.
The urge to do/build something Friday was still there though so I rigged up a new anchor setup, tastefully nicked from some guy at TexasKayakFishernman.com.
- The quick release will come in handy for shark fishing.
Myself and the guys I fish with have been adopting the kitchen sink approach to fishing lately targeting a number of different species in the one session. Usually involves carrying a bit of extra equipment/ overnight gear. The Quest, unlike my old Nemo should be able to handle this easy. The Nemo was great for skinny water bassing, but in tidal waters it was prone to getting thrown around by current and wind way too easy.
Saturday morning I was back at Sunstate to buy some Ram space savers (RAM-247U-3) and some of the older model Ram tubes (RAP-119). The plan is to keep everything (except maybe a sounder mount) the same size fittings so everything is interchangeable.
The two space savers took a couple of minutes to install.
I had a look for an adequate rod holder but finding one in a retail store that I was happy with just didn’t happen. Ended up buying straight from the Australian distributer.
- RAM-117BU Rod Holder - RAM-2021U Arm
I hadn’t quite worked out exactly how I was going to mount the rear ram tube backing plates when I purchased them but in the event I couldn’t reach through the hull it was suggested well nuts could be used as a fall back option.
As it happens I did manage to reach, but only just. The only problem now was that the nuts didn't fit the backing plate properly. The captive area was simply the wrong size and they kept slipping. I ended up having to use a broken flat head screw driver I found to fill in the gap between the nut and the plate until it started to bite.
It wouldn't have been that bigger issue if access to the area was easier. My arm looked like I had been running sand paper over it afterwards. And the cramps from the awkward angle the body was in were pretty painful. Not doing that shit again. It took way too long. I had had enough by then anyay. Packed up shop and headed down the coast to watch 3 “B grade” AFL teams play very poor football in the rain. The sandpaper arms and the cramp pains were less painful than watching those games. Should have stay at home and kept working on the yak.
I took an early mark from work yesterday to finish the other Ram tube mount. This time I ran a second flat backing plate to solve the issues I had with the last one.
No where near as painful to put this one in. With the tubes installed looks a little like this. It does look like it could get in the way of an exaggerated paddle stroke, but I doubt it’ll affect mine.
The plan is to install a sounder amongst other things, but the first stage of mods was just to get it in a condition to carry a bit of extra gear on the water.
Anyway some random shots.
Test session planned for Saturday morning for an hour or so.
