College Kids Spring Break

[randlemanboater]

Last week was my son's spring break so we went down to Holden Beach with his girlfriend and his roommate/best friend. I took my "new" boat with me with visions of plying they offshore waters in search of large game fish...instead it was cold and windy all week.

I did get a chance to run the boat several times in the ICW and worked on figuring out where everything will be stowed and what all I need to fix/get.

The boat runs great and handles very well, it has lots of room, I am very pleased with it.

The only problem I found was that it is way under propped...at 5200 rpm, I was getting only 25 mph. I did some research on my motor mounted on similar sized boats as well as used the Mercury prop calculator and determined that I probably need a 16x18.5 instead of the 15.5x17 that is on it now. I found one on ebay very reasonably priced so it is on the way, will be a few weeks before I can get back to try it out.

We did sneak out of Shalotte inlet for a couple hours one day to grab a few black bass, we caught a bunch of 12.5 inchers, two 13 inch keepers, and one 40 inch Red Drum (Joeys girlfriend caught it, it was her first time saltwater fishing).

https://i.imgur.com/cH9221Ah.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/Q13uOHuh.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/TEmHw7th.jpg

[phatdaddy]

Nice fish and good shake down cruise. It is always cold and blowing during spring break. I just left grocery store and all the locals are in long pants with hoodie sweatshirts, socks & crocs, etc. 60* with a hard north wind.

Store was full of kids in shorts and tank tops.

Ahhhhh, to be young again.

[randlemanboater]

Yeah, we saw a couple of boatloads of kids (college age) go by early in the week wearing t shirts and shorts, playing loud music, etc. At the same time, I was wearing 3 jackets and a boggin so I know they were freezing their butts off.