Sorry, I don't have any pictures for this section, at least not yet.  I will try and find some to post later though.  Well, I spent yesterday, Saturday, June 10, removing the fan and converting it from a 9 blade to a 6 blade.  It wasn't that difficult and after the Maiden Voyage I know I don't need that much extra lift capability.

Then I started looking over the rudder and steering controls again.  I decided to lengthen one of the steering control arms to give me more steering wheel travel for the same amount of rudder travel.  I also learned on the maiden voyage that the steering wheel could be forced past the stop when turning to the right.  Well, this caused the steering wheel to begin working opposite the way that it should (that was a fun discovery!) so I lengthened the stop bar and eliminated that problem.

On Sunday, June 11, I finished up the steering controls but I also discovered the steering control bolts in the rudders had worked loose.  Upon closer inspection, the bolts had broken loose from the filler material and almost worn through the fiberglass cloth.  I pulled the rudders, sanded off the glass on one side, removed all the old filler material, set the bolts in new filler and covered it with a patch from the 1708 biaxial cloth.  The cloth overlapped the steering bolt and the pivot tube and was done on both sides of the rudder.  It should now withstand anything the rest of the rudders encounter!  I also patched a small nick in the trailing edge of one of the rudders (A swamp mishap, I'm sure.)

Well, I'm glad resin cures quickly.  It was off to the lake and another test run.  Today was a little breezy but I thought we should do okay since the lake is wider and more open than the river.  We launched, answered a couple questions, smiled politely back at a few stares and headed out from the boat launch.  I knew right away I still had problems.  The craft would get moving, start the climb towards the top of the hump, but was just never quite able to make it over.  At least not going into the wind with 4-6 inch waves.  Now this just didn't seem right!  So we headed over to a calm area that was protected from the wind and waves and tried again.  Well after a long run and a lot of "here we go's", we finally got over the hump.  The skirt problem about blowing a lot of spray is almost gone, moving the rear skirt attachment seemed to help a lot.  Even though it took a lot of effort to get over the hump, we were able to do it a lot quicker than last week but the spray coming over the bow from under the bow skirt is still annoying although it is much better than it was.  Next I will add about an inch to the bottom of the bow skirt to try and minimize the gap that is letting the air blow the water forward.

We cruised up the lake, falling off the hump once when I throttled back a little to far just before we hit another boat's wake.  We just got into another calm area and tried again.  When we decided to turn around, we discovered that maneuvering is much more difficult downwind.  I thought that it would be a lot easier to get up over the hump with a tailwind but I discovered that the spray created by us taking so long to get going, was pulled into the fan and soaked the fan belt enough that it slipped and we lost cushion pressure.  Reducing the engine rpms a little stopped the slippage and brought us right back up on cushion but we had lost some of our forward speed and we just kept repeating the process.  So, off to the calm, quiet spots again.  Up over the hump and off we went.  Once we got going we could go anywhere around the lake, over the boat wakes (neat ride), upwind, downwind, etc.  This bothered me because it seemed to difficult to get going (it felt like there just wasn't quite enough thrust) and our top speed wasn't as high as I expected either.  I had to run near full throttle just to maintain momentum.  I know I built her a little heavy, but I'm sure it's not that much overweight!

We headed back to the ramp and I dropped off the wife and went back out to see what it would do with just me.  Going out, and into the wind without any protection, it almost got over the hump.  She tried real hard and I could feel it almost ready to break over the hump, but it just wouldn't happen until I turned around and started downwind.  Then it took off pretty well, a little longer than it should maybe, but it did get up and go.  I wnet back to the ramp and we loaded up to head for home.  I did notice a noise that was a little louder than usual today.  I have been putting it off to the half welds I did on the exhaust system tubing.  I can see where some exhaust has been blowing through the cracks.  The plan is to weld them up in the next week or so, but anyway.  As I was playing with the engine I began to notice that the noise was from around the engine itself and it could be heard when I turned the prop by hand with the engine shut down.  It sounded like a very heavy sigh.  I started feeling around and noticed it was coming from the head gasket area.  So I decided to pull the head.  Sure enough, there was some blowby getting through the gasket, hence that odd noise that I thought was getting worse.  I'll try and get a gasket tomorrow and reassemble everything over the next couple days.  I'm sure this has robbed me of some of my HP.  I don't have the tach working yet so I don't really know what rpm I have been getting, but after this latest discovery I'm sure its not been what the engine is capable of.

Well, I definitely don't like having a blown gasket, but it is a used engine, and maybe finally I have discovered the reason I have had so much trouble getting the craft to move like it is supposed to.  More updates to come as I make progress with the repairs.