This morning Argy and I got up early and drove to Bar Harbor to have breakfast with our son and his girlfriend before heading back to Ellsworth to pick up my new Lund at Branch Pond Marine. We got the paperwork filled out and wrote the big check before getting the walk through on how to make everything work. After going over all of the details we drove back to Union. After a short break at my desk I began fitting the boat out with the required safety equipment and handy items that I like to have on board. It did not take long to cover the basics so we headed down to Seven Tree Pond for the inaugural ride.
Here I am with Pat Jude of Branch Pond Marine, taking over the new boat.
This is another 20 foot Lund Alaskan with a 75 hp Mercury Optimax outboard. I am hoping that the slightly larger outboard will give me a little more speed when I need it and more importantly the power that is sometimes needed to push that large boat up onto plane when loaded. It came through with an electronics package that includes an electric trolling motor on the bow and a fish finder already installed. The white hull did not get booed by Argy who told me that it was not ugly (better response than expected).
The initial trip was a huge success if short, maybe a half an hour. The onboard speedometer is only off by 3 mph according to my handheld GPS with a ¾ throttle top speed of roughly 30 mph. Faster than the old one but not a lot faster.
There a number of features that I will need some time to figure out like a live well for bait. The trailer being brand new is a dream to load and unload the boat from, the only downside being that the crank is low enough that I have to bend over to crank the boat on. Better exercise I think.
I’m looking forward to many shakedown trips this spring before my first clients, and then to a busy summer seated at the console showing lots of folks my little corner of the world.
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