Sea Gazelle
New member
First off, I'd like to thank all of the contributor's to this site for your variety of stories, advice, and general humility in the way you're willing to discuss the care and operation of your vessels. A donation to the operation of this site is a mere percentage of the savings we have accrued in time, money, and headaches.
Let me briefly introduce ourselves... My wife and I recently celebrated our 6th anniversary and decided now would be a good time to try something new and exciting that would both challenge us and open us up to new adventures. The original thought was to purchase a fishing boat and we quickly settled on the Arima to fulfill this purpose. After much research on the Arima boat-owners site, we kept running across discussion's of Arima vs. C-Dory. Being that I'm one to cover every angle prior to making such a big purchase, I began to research the benefit's of the C-Dory vs. Arima. Long story short, it didn't take too long to determine the C-Dory would be the boat for us! The versatility of the boat being the biggest selling point, in case the fishing hobby didn't work out or if one day the Seattle Times declared "Last Fish Caught in Puget Sound!", that we wouldn't be stuck with a fishless fishing boat and could then go about our cruising lifestyle. After a visit with "Salty" and her owner in Anacortes, we quickly decided the C-Dory was indeed our perfect solution.
Well, "our boat" came up for sale much more quickly than anticipated. Being that it was a mere 2100 miles away, a marine survey and water test was ordered. Everything checked out beautifully other than a "rough idle" condition that the mechanic thought a load of fresh fuel would cure. Before we knew it a 2006 22' Cruiser was sitting in our driveway.
Last weekend we trailered her over to the Columbia, just North of Wenatchee, for our initial run as we are familiar with the waters there. After topping off the tanks (one tank half of original fuel, the other 1/4 full, and adding SeaFoam and blue Stabil) we were on our way to the launch. My brother followed in his ski boat as we turned out of the marina. The Honda was extremely hesitant to come up out of idle, and my initial fear was that the carburator's needed at best a cleaning and worst a rebuild. After pushing on for a bit we were able to coax the engine into higher and higher rpm's, at one point reaching a top speed of 30 mph (downstream via gps monitoring) which is cheating a little. The hesitancy of the motor grew less and less, but we still would get "burps" every couple of minutes or so that would quickly drop our rpm's before catching again. I'm not much in the way of mechanically inclined, but it would seem to me that fouled carbs would behave in more of a consistent manner. Could it be the SeaFoam was doing it's job? But then why the occassional hiccup every couple minutes?
Ran her for about an hour, during which my wife proclaimed "I Love This Boat!!" Music to my ears! It seemed to me this boat must be the watery offspring of a Jeep / VW camper. The plan was to take her our for a long cruise the next day, Sunday. Sunday morning, getting her prepped for another run, I decided to drain the fuel/water separator bowl. My brother mentioned it would be a good idea to replace the filter and I quickly found a replacement accompanying the spare parts under the sink/stovetop. Went to remove the plastic bowl/drain assembly and the thing jams on me. The bowl grabs onto the threads of the old filter and holds tight. Thinking this is a job for another day, I attempt to reseat it and attach it once again. Start the motor with the rabbit ear flushing assembly, it runs for a couple minutes and then dies. Reprime, which takes forever, and the motor takes right off, runs again and dies. After a bit of troubleshooting I was able to see the orange o-ring of the drain/bowl had split and was allowing air to be pulled through the threads. Being that it was Sunday and we were a good 100 miles from any open marine store, we were stuck. A good lesson learned however, and I feel a bit better about my non-mechanically inclined troubleshooting skills.
I'll have our list of "newbie" questions later, but off to work for now!
Let me briefly introduce ourselves... My wife and I recently celebrated our 6th anniversary and decided now would be a good time to try something new and exciting that would both challenge us and open us up to new adventures. The original thought was to purchase a fishing boat and we quickly settled on the Arima to fulfill this purpose. After much research on the Arima boat-owners site, we kept running across discussion's of Arima vs. C-Dory. Being that I'm one to cover every angle prior to making such a big purchase, I began to research the benefit's of the C-Dory vs. Arima. Long story short, it didn't take too long to determine the C-Dory would be the boat for us! The versatility of the boat being the biggest selling point, in case the fishing hobby didn't work out or if one day the Seattle Times declared "Last Fish Caught in Puget Sound!", that we wouldn't be stuck with a fishless fishing boat and could then go about our cruising lifestyle. After a visit with "Salty" and her owner in Anacortes, we quickly decided the C-Dory was indeed our perfect solution.
Well, "our boat" came up for sale much more quickly than anticipated. Being that it was a mere 2100 miles away, a marine survey and water test was ordered. Everything checked out beautifully other than a "rough idle" condition that the mechanic thought a load of fresh fuel would cure. Before we knew it a 2006 22' Cruiser was sitting in our driveway.
Last weekend we trailered her over to the Columbia, just North of Wenatchee, for our initial run as we are familiar with the waters there. After topping off the tanks (one tank half of original fuel, the other 1/4 full, and adding SeaFoam and blue Stabil) we were on our way to the launch. My brother followed in his ski boat as we turned out of the marina. The Honda was extremely hesitant to come up out of idle, and my initial fear was that the carburator's needed at best a cleaning and worst a rebuild. After pushing on for a bit we were able to coax the engine into higher and higher rpm's, at one point reaching a top speed of 30 mph (downstream via gps monitoring) which is cheating a little. The hesitancy of the motor grew less and less, but we still would get "burps" every couple of minutes or so that would quickly drop our rpm's before catching again. I'm not much in the way of mechanically inclined, but it would seem to me that fouled carbs would behave in more of a consistent manner. Could it be the SeaFoam was doing it's job? But then why the occassional hiccup every couple minutes?
Ran her for about an hour, during which my wife proclaimed "I Love This Boat!!" Music to my ears! It seemed to me this boat must be the watery offspring of a Jeep / VW camper. The plan was to take her our for a long cruise the next day, Sunday. Sunday morning, getting her prepped for another run, I decided to drain the fuel/water separator bowl. My brother mentioned it would be a good idea to replace the filter and I quickly found a replacement accompanying the spare parts under the sink/stovetop. Went to remove the plastic bowl/drain assembly and the thing jams on me. The bowl grabs onto the threads of the old filter and holds tight. Thinking this is a job for another day, I attempt to reseat it and attach it once again. Start the motor with the rabbit ear flushing assembly, it runs for a couple minutes and then dies. Reprime, which takes forever, and the motor takes right off, runs again and dies. After a bit of troubleshooting I was able to see the orange o-ring of the drain/bowl had split and was allowing air to be pulled through the threads. Being that it was Sunday and we were a good 100 miles from any open marine store, we were stuck. A good lesson learned however, and I feel a bit better about my non-mechanically inclined troubleshooting skills.
I'll have our list of "newbie" questions later, but off to work for now!
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