I just acquired "Grandpa's old fishing boat" which is my wife's description
of her grandfathers 92 Bayliner Trophy 2002 walkaround. Now before I get all
the Bayliner flack this poor old electrician has been using a 16 ft
Thunderbird Tri-hull for ten years for both salmon fishing in the ocean and
wakeboarding and kneeboarding on Trinity Lake. Repowering the Thunderbird
with a 1985 100hp Johnson last year was a real kick compared to the 85 hp
Merc I had worked on from day one!

Since my wife and I first started dating (married for two years now) I've
wanted this boat but waited until her grandpa was ready to sell his baby.
Dick and his wife Jean have taken this boat from Mexico to Alaska, towed
behind a moterhome, not on the water for the 13 years they have owned it.
It's a family boat forsure and I hope to have as many adventures with it as
they have had. Dick turned 80 last year and has some heath problems so he
can't maintain the boat much less operate it. Yes I plan on taking him
fishing as time and conditions allow as he and his wife live two hours north
of me in Brookings, OR.

Now that I have the beast in all it's glory the work begins starting with
oxidation of the hull and barnacles! No boat of mine will have any sign of
barnacles until I'm in my 80's either! My stepson and I popped the dried on
barnacles off with ice scrapers and thought we were getting off easy. As you
all know they need to be scraped off with a sharp tool, this is in progress
and will be done at weeks end. As for the oxidation on the sides of the
hull.... I tried the normal cleaners but the best thing turned out to be
Soft Scrub and a gray Scotch Brite pad on an orbital sander. The next step
will be a proper buffing and then a good waxing.

The boat has been to the dock three times now, the first time it was shy
with the trim tilt relays not working, for the first time! Those have been
replaced thanks to boatingsolutions.com . The next time the motor would not
start with both batteries giving way.

When I went to charge the batteries I found the connections in a sad state.
The battery connections had been crimped with some kind of vise! After
looking things over in the aft of the boat it was time for new connections
for boat batteries and all the pumps lurking in the bilge. After all the
connections were greased, crimped and heatshrinked all was well. I got off
really lucky replacing the fishwell pump with a Waterpuppy pump Dick used
for washing down the boat. I'll be buying a washdown pump and the cute hose
and sprayer thing out of West Marine soon.

Oh I did say I'm an electrician didn't I ... I was told that both motors
had been checked out and the batteries had been charged, Grandpa got ripped
off by the guy up north I suppose. The spark plugs still had the signs of
fogging oil on both the main and the 8 hp kicker. My father (87 years young)
has the old AC spark sandblaster which cleaned them all up nicely. The
third time was the charm at the dock with the main 150 hp Mercury starting
up at the turn of the key and purring like it should.

Now being limited in boating experice this is much more boat than my little
runabout ever though of being. It ran out fine and the kicker started on the
third pull. I'm very boat proud right now as you can tell from this long
winded posting. This boat came with all the goodies as far as electronics
and fishing gear minus fishing poles as Dick will continue to fish when he
can.

I keep finding hidden treasures in the boat like a casting net with the
optional thrower thingy, a really cool and now nicely polished brass scale,
navigation charts, lingcod jigs, tuna feathers, tuna plugs, freshwater bass
gear,a net, crab pots (OR pots that have to be modified for CA) and the most
important thing is the history that this boat has with my new brides family.

Given the trials and such, I'm thinking that "Banana Luck" would be a proper
name for this boat.

Good Boating to all!
Mick