Death Trap II

sorry to hear about your disaster Lofty. I added a donation to your gofundme to help you get up and running again. god knows how long insurance will take. I also have a used dewalt impact driver that the window fitters left in my house. It is used and i dont have the case or charger, but it is one of their higher end drivers. I dont use dewalt battery tools so i can drop it with someone in poole next time i am down if you would like it. (i would have chased them up to get it back to them if they hadn't done such a rubbish job)

Hi Ruairi, i dont know about the construction of these boats, but you need to find out how the underfloor structure is put together. This is not always easy to find out though. i.e. is there any foam. However, I would suspect that there is very little foam under the floor and it is more about cavity buoyancy. The best way to check if there is water trapped is to get her out of the water on a trailer (turn the sump pump off before you do so it doesnt pump out while recovering) and wiggle her around (ensure to account for the fuel sloshing around). Tip up the bow with the jocky wheel and see if that sends water to the rear drain/sump pump. If it does, you might need to do some calcs about expected weight and get her weighed (checking for water logging) if it is catching rainwater, you might want to check the weight distribution in the boat. i.e. where is the battery and the fuel tank? these things have a huge impact on how the boat sits without passengers and could be causing it to sit incorrectly and prevent the water from draining, causing the viscous cycle.

ha, thanks Brian.

well done Brian. Bittersweet to see her go, but a relief it was quick. Sadly i have decided it is time to sell my bella 500. I am happy with her, but at the moment i am not getting the time to use her with kids stuff at the weekends. Thought it was best to sell her now, before major depreciation sets in. But i do want something a bit bigger in a couple of years time. Can i ask where you advertised her? I used blue lagoon as i am not around to show people over her, and they listed her on boats.com. Only 1 viewer so far..... https://uk.boats.com/power-boats/2019-bella-500br-9370920/

my son uses pinnacle for his youtube channel videos. reasonably easy to learn and a lot cheaper

i have only boat 1 boat through a broker. Mark at Stingray at cobbs. As a buyer, i found him straightforward and easy to deal with. There are always the issues of what they try to get away with (in my case it was a dud trailer), but that is part of buying boats. As a seller, I have spoken to him several times after and phones me when people are interested in my kind of boat. he charges a flat 6%. I have used Blue lagoon for servicing and repairs, but he does seem to do a lot of repossessions for sale. Have seen him a rockely taking boats on repo.

i tend to go after bass and other eating fish, i find the mackerel around the fal amazing. Have tried guilt head bream, but without success. never managed to locate them.

i am going on a trip to cornwall again this year in late august. will be interesting to see what happens this year after the absolute bust of last year.

Finally managed to get out this year on sunday. Got out on the water from Rockley at 9:30 after traffic was light. Was a bit choppy getting out, the forecast was for a north wind, but it was firmly from the east and was a bit rolly in the bay, but we headed for the middle patch. Tried to employ my limited anchoring skills to get over the mount on the western edge of the patch as it was marking lots of fish, but some inconsiderate lobster potter had laid his string right across where my anchor was dragging, so we gave up and moved closer to the other boats. Started seeing something really encouraging, huge schools of tiny bait fish swimming about 1 or 2 meters under the boat, and they just kept coming. The water was so clear that you could actually see them. I have never seen that in the bay before in that much water. We managed to pick up some mackerel when we finally saw them chasing the fry on the sonar. But i was surprised at the relative lack of bigger fish chasing them. But we were after bream. just after we arrived most of the other boats started leaving, tried not to take it personally. But minutes after they left, about 2pm, it started going crazy. We started with a big female, but we let her go given the season, but it went nuts. the second your bait hit the bottom, they started attacking it. Sadly we didnt get any more keeper size males, but it was good sport. There were lots of tiny pout, and the hard part was keeping them off the squid long enough for a bream to find it. any advice on keeping those pout off your bait would be gratefully received as i didnt know what to do. Keeping a small hook and bait for the bream was making life difficult.

rules are vaguely phrased. however, someone on here posted a clarification a while ago. I think the result was that you can take a legal size bass from the shore in a nursery area (i.e. not from a vessel), but you arent even allowed to target bass in a nursery area from a vessel. some methods of targeting bass are completely banned in the nursery (live sandeels), even from the shore.

i found these recently, i havent tried them. but recent experience of having to crawl under my house to re-run sky cables makes me want to try! https://www.amazon.co.uk/IRSCorp-Pulling-Galvanizing-Antislip-Flexible/dp/B09PR9LX85/ref=asc_df_B09PR9LX85/?tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=606463532860&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=7539641418331427086&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=1006789&hvtargid=pla-1680299043511&psc=1 they semingly grip on like a chinese finger trap and flow through more easily, and dont pull off like tape.

gpsmap 702 series. all i have is nav and sonar. It has been nothing but trouble. Plug connections corroded out, GPS regularly takes hours to start working. Sonar is a real pain to get any useful imagery. I really liked the raymarine dragonfly sonar. i found its performance the best of the sonars i have had. Playing with the settings enabled reasonably accurate identification of fish, even down to bait fish schools.

the 4 year old garmin (I hate it) that i have on my current boat is far worse than the raymarine i had 10 years ago in all functions, but it looks like garmin have upped their game a bit. Not before time.

I was originally pointed to parker boats by someone on here. But what i didnt realise is how much better value they are brand new when compared to similar model beneteuxs and quicksilvers. Seems they hold their value exceptionally well.

i have my eye on a Barracuda 7 or 8 as my next boat. Everything i have looked up about them ticks the right boxes. The only thing i am not so keen on is the lack of inside seating. I also like the Antares 7 and 8. Everything i have read up about parker boats is great to, and i think they are probably a better build quality. But sadly they are rare as hens teeth on the second hand market.