Hurricane Ike ripped us a new one.

Galveston Bay, Tx. Appex Predator

Joel Murphy

Pace, FL.

Jonathan Jones

2002 31' Pursuit 3000 Express  http://www.themadgaffer.com

2005 Triton 173sport

1984 SeaRay 210

2101DC Seaswirl

F225 Yamaha

"If you only remember one thing that I say, remember this... don't fish where there aint no fish"

Capt. Fred Morrow

I would like to have a cage over the fan but shrouds drasticaly reduce velocity of the pusher fan. Its actualy fairly safe. Only a complete moron could walk into it and then he would have to be a very tall moron. The biggest danger with my fan set up is to have a catastrophic failure of the blades and parts went flying and someone happened to be standing in the wrong place, off to the side of the turning fan.

I make sure to tell everyone for this reason to not stand dierectly on the side of the fan when its running.

The fan is awesome. It sounds cool and develops good pushing power. The days of push polling are a thing of the past for this old back and arms.

The boat came from Krestas Marine in Edna, Tx. The hull is a Alweld 1870 SSMB commercial model. It is a tunnel with sponsoons. Has a 20 gl tank.

Motor is a 60 hp 4-stroke yammy hi-thrust. It is very quiet. At idle, it is hard to tell if it is running or not. It will smartly jump up on plane with a full load and 4 adults.

Fan is a 13hp 4-stroke Honda with a 3 blade composite prop with remote controls on the forward deck.

Electronics are a Garmin combination GPS/fish finder unit. It does a lot of cool extra stuff like telling the moon phase, overhead times and tide times and heights for the body of water I may be in. Stereo is a Poly Planer marine with a panisonic, marine powered sub-woofer and 2 Bazooka marine speakers. It cranks out.

Lighting is what it looks like. Incadescent light bulbs but these are different than what one would find in their home. These bulbs are 12v, 100wts, ruff service. There are 6 of them pulling 50 amps. The fan has a GM alternator that pushes 100 charging amps into the selected battery. There is a back-up battery and a on-board 2-bank charger

I have been pleased with the lights, they work a little better than I anticipated. They have a huge spread and what looks to be good penetration.

I need some days off and some good weather to check it out good. Hurricane Ike really tore up the upper coast. Curfews every where, you have to show a ID that has you address to get into most coastal places, etc. It may be some time before I can give any gigging reports. The one night that I had a chance to take it out was blown out conditions but the boat seemed to be drafting in 7 inches of water with 4 adults and the lights spread was about a 15 foot radius so I am looking forward to a night when all the stars align and the Flounder Gods are smiling upon me.

Thanks for the cool comments.

More pix...

Galveston Bay, Tx. Appex Predator

I think its 70 inches wide, lots of elbow room for 2 men handling gigs.

The steps out back are sponsoons. They provide extra floatation to off-set the weight of the outboard...the thing gets very shallow with the outboard trimed up and running on the fan.

Galveston Bay, Tx. Appex Predator

Grand Daughter  #2

I'm alright your alright everything is alright" IS NOT ALRIGHT

"Eat More Fish!"

Thats a real nice boat for sure, good luck with the gigging!!!

Jeff

Do you live in Galveston or just flounder there?  Didn't even look like ya'll lost any leaves off the trees?

DFA

Noise is not a issue. I have a quality little yammy 2400is generator and tried to get the builder to mount me up some 150wt HPS fixtures but he would not consider it for libility reasons.

My choice was either Halos or the bulbs and he strongly urged me to consider the bulbs and here is why.

Our Galveston waters are rarely gin clear, they are usualy a little of color and in these conditions bulbs penetrate better because halos reflect a lot of light off the suspended particles to the back of your retinas, you do this a lot, say three nights in a row and you can effectively burn the backs of your retinas like someone who watched a welding stick to long. Bulbs don't do that.

He actualy even said in poor condition to replace the 100wt bulbs with 50wt bulbs for even better penetration, go figure. I was very skepticle at first and had a hard time believing bulbs could be better than halos but since Krestas Marine has been building boats for giggers for 30 years and are giggers themselves I reluctantly took his advice.

All I can do now is give this lighting system a try and report back.

I'll tell you about the storm in my next post, all is not well in Galveston.

Galveston Bay, Tx. Appex Predator

I live in Galveston County, take the time to google up this address to see my proximity to the coast... Bacliff, Tx. 77518

I live in a newer subdivion, it has buried electricle cables and a raised elevation of almost 20 feet and good drainage. My sorrunding communitys average 5-10 feet abouve sea level with old growth trees and raised power lines, not good for a 15 foot storm surge and 110 mph winds in a slow moving huge storm. All coastal communitys are wiped out along the shore. Every shore town has dusk to dawn curfews, there are official vehicles every where...fire trucks, ambulances, military, out of state troopers and power company repair trucks from as far away as Canada. I work for Dupont and we are still down, Dupont doesn't stay down for any reason so you its bad.

Here are a few pictures I took. The first picture is of a house that I use to live in, the bungalow. In the picture you are looking at what is left, nothing but the pads/foundation for the garage and house that got washed away. This shot is taken from my best mans backyard.

I used to live in this house to, this is my old bedroom.

This following picture is surreal. The roof to the garage of the bungalow in the driveway of the other house I lived in in the last picture. How ironic is that?

This is my best man, Eddies house. His place faired ok considering the absolute looses around him. His house is up on stilts, the surge washed out the bottom of the house which was a garage and a hang-out place. The bottom contents are down the block and across the street.

All these pictures are from the community of San Leon, Tx.

Galveston Bay, Tx. Appex Predator

I'm sorry the pictures, they are misleading. I forgot to mention I took the pictures of the boat about a week before the storm. My computer had a virous and I just got it back up and running. About 1/5 of our sub division has blue tarps and rolled-up wet carpet on the curbs. The roof damage is concentratred in mostly one section in the back of the neighborhood, I'm thinking a small tornado came thru or some kind of serious down burst. As for me, the winds knocked down a 12 foot Live Oak and a 20 foot Rain Tree. It also took down the double gates on my wood fence but I was able to re-hang the gates and stand and brace the trees back up.

Not looking for any kind of smpathy, disasters happen all over the world all the time and we sit back and watch them on the news like some kind of reality show...its just different when it happens in your area and everyone his effected. I watch the news like anyone else and am amazed at how the keys get racked over and over and people keep on rebuilding.

Mother nature seems to have away to humble anyone.

Galveston Bay, Tx. Appex Predator

Besides, its kept in a storage unit in a undisclosed loacation with a good security system.

Galveston Bay, Tx. Appex Predator

I also want to add that they are very tolerable at idle and slow speeds and this is the operations at wich it will be used most of the night. The only time it gets loud is when you stand on the throttle to make a hard turn or to power yourself off a sand bar, etc.

I think I've heard gennys that where much more annoying.

Galveston Bay, Tx. Appex Predator