Inaugural Voyage For New (To Me) Arima Boat Gets An A-OK

In my last post, I mentioned that I hoped to get the Arima in the water sometime this weekend. Good thing it was still part of the holiday “weekend” today, as we launched her this morning.

My cousin Joel Narva joined me for the inaugural voyage, and we pronounced it a splashing success at day’s end. We even caught fish, albeit not the kind we were after.

In reality, today’s trip was a bit stressful. Whenever you acquire a used boat, there are a multiplicity of things that need checking out. Hull, main engine, kicker, radio, depth/fish finder, batteries, switches, downriggers and bilge pumps all need scrutiny. Most importantly, how does she handle the waters of Puget Sound?

Just fine, thank you. All systems are a-ok.

We even caught fish – dog fish! (Puget Sound small annoying sharks) Pic at right shows one of three that managed to spoil our fun. I couldn’t figure out why they would hit a salmon lure until we saw half of a “shaker” (a salmon too juvenile to keep) on the hook with the shark. The small Chinook hit first, and the shark took advantage of easy prey.

Above left is Joel manning the tiller handle of the kicker as we trolled through fairly calm waters for about four hours. The best news is that the boat passed the test with flying colors. We’ll get the Coho later when they finally get here. We might have been a tad early for the ocean fish.