Breaking in the new ride. LJ 10/14

So, having dove into the sport of spearfishing, and having friends who always have broken boats, I took it upon myself to buy a vessel worthy of some offshore diving. Whether it be the Islands, or paddy hopping. This 24 ft Skipjack with twin engines and a bitchin' teak swim step seemed to fit the bill.

I bought her two weeks ago, knowing she needed some love. It's a strong hull, with solid volvos. The reassuring thing was, the guy who owned it before me had it for over 10 years, which means it's been fished and abused, but to keep it fishing, it had to be taken care of.

On the maiden voyage, we were experiencing some overheating issues intermittent between both engines. With the help of my good bud Robfish, we just overhauled the engines, attacking all the usual suspects. Thermostats, intake hoses for air leaks, sea strainers, impellers, spark plugs, new oil and new fuel.

I launched with my buddy at 5am this morning to do a quick sea trial and see how she was doing. I knew I had to be trailered and off the water by 9 to make it to school, but that didn't stop us from tossing a ziplock of some leftover summer squid in the boat, one rod each and heading straight for La Jolla.

I haven't wired up my Lowrance yet, but when you start to put together the pieces, eventually you don't need to rely on your GPS marks as much as you thought you did when you dropped $749 on that piece of plastic.

We knew the best bet was find the loose kelp close to lobster bouys somewhere around what looked to be off some sort of familiar landmark off the coast.

On the first lobster buoy, we dropped our squid, and instant hook ups. It took only a few minutes to hit our limit of Boccaccio (2each, although I read on spearboard it's now three?) and a few Vermillion each.

All in all, a great day, A quick cooler with some fish to feed the friends and neighbors tonight, the boat ran very well and the seas were extremely calm. We were doing 32 knots the whole way home.

And no, I won't be giving up the plastic
The reds were between 3-5lbers. Hardly any dinks.