Fishing Rhino

The cloudiness is caused by the sun's UV rays. You can reduce the problem by using a wax or other product that contains a UV inhibitor, and keeping it where the sun's rays cannot do their work on your gel coat. Ideally, a boat should be stored in a building. It's not only the gel coat. It will also protect your trailer tires. What is often referred to as dry rot when tires start cracking can most often be attributed to UV rays. It's why they sell covers for trailer wheels, especially those on mobile or motor homes. I don't do it, but it is a good idea to jack a trailer up so the tires are not bearing any weight when stored for the off season.

Sorry, I cannot help you with the boats....................errr, I mean boots. But consider this. I have a question about custom fitted boots that will last for twenty or thirty years. Chances are, over that period of time your feet may change considerably. What is custom fit and comfortable today may be intolerable in twenty years. For years I wore size 12 footwear. About twenty years ago, I could no longer fit comfortably in size twelve. I had to get size 13s. Like clothes, shoe sizes can vary from company to company. Just a thought.

I also seem to recall that trolley cars run on DC. I'm wondering if the current that powers the trains is AC or DC.

Unless I'm mistaken, direct current is worse than alternating current because it's a constant on. AC does have a micro pause as it changes. Kind of like a golf swing. It's considered one swing consisting of two parts, the backswing and then the swing. There is a stop at the top, unless of course you have a loop in the transition from windup to delivery.

When towing, it's not so much a question of how much you can tow. It's how much you can stop. Brakes should be your first consideration. If you get into a situation where you cannot stop your rig because the brakes aren't adequate, It's going to get a whole lot more expensive, and possibly painful, or worse, than losing a transmission or some other part of the drivetrain. If the trailer has surge brakes, that will help considerably. If not, the tow vehicle has to handle all the braking. How the vehicle handles when towing should be your second consideration with towing muscle coming in third. I've never weighed my Z-7 on the trailer, and loaded with fuel and gear. I'd guess it's over 3500 pounds. According to the specs, the package (boat, motor and trailer) is listed at 3000 pounds. Add fuel, gear, and anything else you stow in the boat, and you are getting close to, it not over the 3500 pound number.

OK guys, time to get off the pot, so to speak. All who are or think they might be interested in the get togethers, now is the time to step up. I cannot speak for any other boaters, but Gramp, Tate and I are making ourselves available. What we would like is for everyone else to step up and decide who will be willing to take charge and coordinate our outings. So, what you need to do is set up a meeting, time and place. Gramp, Tate and I are pretty flexible. Now is the time for input so we can get together and get the ball rolling. Last year the foundation was put in place. It's up to all who want to be a part of this to speak up. The door has been opened. Come on in, and let's get it figured out together.

Micro balloons might not work. What you need to make a paste is either Aerosil or Cabosil. The micro balloons will float to the surface. Aerosil and Cabosil are dessicants (fumed silica). It's what the crystals are in the packaging of electronic devices to absorb moisture and prevent it from damaging the electronics. I use it to make fairing compound to fill in small steps that pose a problem for mat or roving when laying up fiberglass panels. You can make it to any consistency. We make it like a heavy grease so it stays where you put it. Depending on where they are you might do just as well with a tube of Marine Silicone, or bath and shower silicone. They can be bought in small tubes with a nozzle. Ideal for plugging holes. 3M 5200 would work very well, but depending on where the holes are something more economical, like the aforementioned silicones, can be adequate.

It should, if done properly. Here are some things you need to know about gel coats. There are two kinds, with wax and without wax. There are actually more kinds but these are the two you need to know about. Gel coat with wax is for final or finish applications. Once applied, the wax "rises" to the surface providing a barrier to the air, preventing the gel coat from merely getting tacky. Understanding this, you can use either. I'd use the same process regardless because it will require less sanding, and buffing. Gel coat with wax may be hard to find. Gel coat is chemically formulated so the surface exposed to the air will cure slowly and maintain a tacky surface. This type is applied to molds. This allows the subsequent application of materials to form a chemical bond with the gel coat rather than an adhesive bond. I don't understand the chemical process. All I know is that the gel coat and composite are linked together. Gel coat with wax is for final or finish applications. Once applied, the wax "rises" to the surface providing a barrier to the air, preventing the gel coat from merely getting tacky. Understanding this, you can use either. I'd use the same process regardless because it will require less sanding, and buffing. First, clean and wax the area around the dents. This will allow for any gel coat that gets spread onto the good surface to be peeled off easily. Dont worry about any that might get into the dents. This will be cleaned up in the subsequent steps. If you cannot find a mold release wax, a hard carnauba paste wax will work. Apply several coats. Clean the depression and sand the surface to provide a good bond. Clean with acetone. Catalyze the gel coat and fill the depression. You may need more than one application depending on the depth of the depressions. Then, cut a piece of wax paper, large enough for a few inches of overlap beyone the perimeter of the depression. Place the wax paper over the gel coat, and spread it smoothly from one side to the other using a flexible spreader. The plastic spreaders that body shops use for bondo work fine. If your boat has a metalflake finish, keep the sanding to a minimum. The flakes are generally aluminum with a colored coating. Cut through that coating and you'll end up with dull silver flakes mixed in. Once spread, do not disturb the wax paper. It is your air barrier, but it also provides for an acceptably smooth surface that will require a minimum of sanding and buffing. Leave it alone for 24 hours. Then, you can test by lifting a corner of the wax paper. It should peel off freely, and the gel coat should be cured. Cure time is dependent upon the temperature. Around seventy is ideal. But sixty degrees should be sufficient for it to cure in 24 hours. Assuming all went well you are ready for the final steps of sanding and buffing. Again, sand lightly and carefully when blending into the original surface. You do not want to sand into the flake. That will be a major headache to do a decent repair job. You are better off with slight imperfections than damaged flakes. Do not try to repair all of them at once. Start with the least conspicuous places to get a "feel" for the process. If you do make a mistake, it will not be as noticable. Good luck with your project. If you have any questions post them here, or send me a private message.

Ohm I goodness. Talk about current events. I cannot imagine watt was going through your mind.

Maybe they did due diligence, and double checked beforehand. Who knows. The bank sent us a copy of the credit report(s). There is a lot of weird stuff on them. We use credit cards for most of our purchases and travel. Consequently the monthly bill on one of them averages 3000 dollars. It has been over 12,000 when we paid for our son-in-law's funeral. They are always paid in full and on time. For some odd reason the credit bureau says we are carrying too large a balance, in spite of the fact that we have done so for years and promptly paid them in full. There is a comment about my Social Security number and fraud. The dates for their concern began January 1, 1958 and ended sometime in 1961. I was a junior in high school on 1/1/58. Never have had a problem with Social Security. My wife, who has an MBA, and retired from her postion as chief nursing officer for a three hospital healthcare system looked through the ten to twelve pages and shook her head. Our credit rating is over 800, and yet in spite of a history of using credit cards and paying them off promptly and in full, they made an issue of the amount of the current unpaid balance on our cards. It's just absurd.

They obviously didn't do due diligence to make sure that the info regarding her death was correct. Yes it would involve more work for them to confirm the accuracy of everything they use to establish an individual's credit rating. It would make their cost of doing business much higher. That's all well and good until their error seriously impacts someone. Suppose an erroneous credit rating prevents Joe and Mary from buying their dream home, or borrowing to invest in a business opportunity. Who covers their loss?

Heck, I'd like to cash in on her life insurance policy. No death certificate needed. The credit rating service has declared her to be dead, oops, they said deceased.

The first credit rating service she spoke with said it would take thirty days to research it. The second one found what caused the error in a few minutes, but it will still take thirty days to go through the process. And after that another seven days or so to get it corrected. Here's what I do not understand. She has W-2 forms showing that her employer paid her for her services through June of 2010 when she retired. Now that she is receiving payments from her tax deferred annuity, she gets W-2s from them since these are now returning those earnings to her. If need be, she could produce her birth certificate, social security card, valid photo ids and whatever else, then show up in person, but they still have to go through their process of finding out where the error was made. Why not correct their error on her credit report and then do their research. It has been established that she is indeed alive.

Of course a pro wants things which stimulate the industry. It is to the benefit of the vendors and pros. The more popular the sport, the more profitable the sport. Think about it this way. You are a weekend warrior, or maybe fish several times per week. For those of us able to get out other than weekends, I can tell you this. It is much nicer fishing on weekdays when the lake isn't full of other fishermen, and an armada of recreational boats, just out cruising or zooming around. Having said that, I do not begrudge anyone from the jetboat set to the party barges enjoying the water and my having to share it with them. We are often as much a nuisance to them as they are to us. Living near Cape Cod the ponds are busiest between the Fourth of July and Labor Day with weekends being the absolute worst as far as boat traffic goes. The fewer the boats, the more freedom I have to access all areas of the pond. From a purely selfish perspective, I don't want to see more boats and more fishing pressure. It does me no good whatever. While stimulating the industry is good for vendors and pros, it's not as good for the recreational fisherman. I love the overcast, drizzly, days for fishing. Not as much activity.

Very good advice. In fact in some cases where larger fish are involved, fishermen will put a good sized polyform ball at the end of their anchor line. When a good fish hooks up, and they need to chase it, they just release the anchor line, fight, and hopefully land the fish, then return to their buoy, tie up to the anchor, and set the fishing lines out again. You never know when you may have to release a hung anchor in rough weather, or some other circumstance. With the buoy, you'll be able to come back to it another time and free it up.

We are in the process of doing business with a local bank, and they pulled up three credit reports. On two of them, my wife is listed as deceased. Here's how that happened. She co-signed a student loan for our son-in-law with Sallie Mae. In 2008, our son-in-law passed away. Because her name was on the loan, someone entered the deceased in her name, not Joey's. It's never a bad idea to check your credit rating. Mistakes do happen. It's not much fun when the bank informs you that you are deceased, or have some other problem that you really do not have. It takes over a month for them to correct your credit report even when it's obviously an error.

My pleasure. You are more than welcome.

Use clear epoxy on the damaged areas to seal them. But first....... Clean and sand off any "fuzzies". Use acetone to wipe it down before applying the epoxy. If you have it indoors, but a heat lamp or something similar to apply moderate heat to the damaged areas. You need to drive out any moisture that is in there, before you seal it. If there is any moisture, it can freeze, expand and cause more damage to the composite. Most boats are made of polyester resin, which is not waterproof. It can and will absorb water if not protected by the gel coat or some other barrier. A relative few are made of vinylester resin which is waterproof, and not subject to water penetration. Exercise caution with any device be it a hair dryer, heat gun or light to warm the areas. Check it frequently. You do not want to apply intense heat to the hull. Resin even cured resin is highly flammable. Once dry and prepped. Mix the epoxy and apply to the area with a brush. Don't try to thoroughly fill the depressions. Just get the area well sealed. That will protect the hull until you can make the cosmetic repairs.

What is made in America? Not my GMC pickup. It was made in Mexico. Hopefully without being political, here goes. When were electronic devices, be they televisions, radios, computers, recording devices, etc., last made in significant numbers in America? What about shoes, furniture, textiles, and clothes? You can buy fresh fruits and vegetables year round. When I was a kid, produce was a seasonal product. Apples in the fall, oranges in the fall/winter, grapes, peaches, plums in the summer. It is now possible to ship produce around the world and deliver it to the supermarket shelves. Unheard of when I was a kid. Communications are instant. Business moves, literally, at the speed of light because of computers. Another factor, world markets have changed dramatically. That necessitated businesses to adapt to changing markets in order to compete and survive. When I was a kid, America was an island when it came to manufacturing and consumption. Overseas competition regardless of wages and regulations just was not practical because of shipping considerations alone. That has all changed. In spite of that, foreign auto companies have found it not only practical, but profitable to manufacture vehicles here. There are several reasons that has happened, but the prime reason is that as these companies grew in the home countries, their labor forces were no longer satisfied to work for "low wages". Costs of production increased in those countries, and no doubt their governments viewed them as a source of revenue as much as a source of jobs. Add transportation costs, and it became practical to open plants in America. Isolationism may have been fine in the past. It's a recipe for disaster today.

Both teams seem to have upped their games. The Pats defense has really done an about face. They were terrible earlier in the year. The Giants were erratic. You never knew which team was going to show up. Like the Pats, their defense was porous. The Giants beat the Pats in Foxborough earlier, no small feat. They gave the Pack all they wanted in the regular season. They crumbled under the onslaught of the "mighty" Redskins, and lost games they should have won. After the loss to the Redskins, it was like someone had waved a magic wand, suddenly reviving their dormant defense. The Patriots, much of the same with their defense. The season's records mean nothing. Both teams have stepped up, and it should be a war, unless one or both of the defenses suffers a relapse. Then it will be a shootout or a blowout.

In what has been the year of the offense, defense was the name of the games yesterday. Both games yesterday were won by the defense. Both games could have gone either way. Manning's biggest contribution yesterday was not so much the two touchdown passes. It was that he did not turn the ball over in spite of the number of sacks, knock downs and hits he took without coughing up the ball.

I would have said that, but who am I to talk?

I'd get a Toyota too, if I could get it with the options I wanted rather than to have to pay almost six thousand dollars for the package that includes the nav system I want, and a bunch of expensive things I don't want, such as the sun/moon roof, and the overhead dvd player. By the time that all that stuff is tossed in, I could get a Denali with more goodies for less money. I like Toyota products, well, except for the first one we had, a '69 Corona which rusted out so badly that the car literal broke as my wife was pulling in the driveway. The structural parts of the unibody which constitute the "frame" had rusted out and broke between the front and rear wheels. It was the worst rust bucket I have ever seen. It was only five years old. But we've had Toyotas and a couple of Lexus that have been fine, dependable cars. Still, I've got over 90,000 miles on my 07 GMC and it's as tight and quiet as the day I drove it out of the dealer's lot. 87,000 miles on the first set of tires and they were not down to the tread wear indicator bars when I replaced them. When someone spends their hard earned money on a vehicle of any brand, if they are happy with it, that's all that matters.

If everyone "knew" that, then everyone would drive Fords. Funny thing about "the best selling truck" is that is by specific brand only. GM sells more pickups than FoMoCo does.

Rigged or not, I do not know. But, it does illustrate, quite clearly, what I have stated about my experience with umbrella rigs for years ago. He looked more like he was retrieving a bait than actually fighting fish. They exert far more frantic energy fighting each other than fighting the fisherman. Banned or not, by states or an organization, I have no opinion, and do not care. My reason for not using one is that multiple hookups really do take the fun out it. If I hadn't used umbrella rigs years ago, I'd most likely be out there buying a couple of these rigs, and using them where they were legal. But, I'm convinced that after a few multiple catches of just dragging the fish back to the boat, it would get put away, or thrown away.