Princecraft Starfish DLX SC Review#4: The hour meter
July 23, 2012
“Rod, you don’t need instruments,” Dave Brown assured me when I asked if the instrument cluster was included with the motor. Apparently they go with the boat, and this one was a stripper. “The ECU in the engine records its hours. Bring it by and I’ll put a gauge on it to determine oil change intervals.” And so I went.
But then the tanks of fuel went by and I found myself wondering intensely when the first service interval was. So I stopped by the dock and Dave had no time to scope the engine. Further delays and I bought oil and filter and changed from the 10W30 break-in oil to Mercury’s 25W40 synthetic blend by myself.
For a variety of reasons, mostly unrelated to the health of the engine, I wanted an hour meter. Nobody seems to sell a true revolution-counter apart from as part of a large instrument cluster. The ignition-on hour meter, on the other hand, is widely available. While such a counter is ridiculous on a tractor as the same person who stalls the thing likely leaves the key on, running on several hundred hours before the battery dies, this might not happen with an outboard motor. Perhaps an ignition-timer is all I need.
The inexpensive impedance meter sensor wraps around a spark plug wire and gives a reading. But it has a little gadgetty digital readout and looks like a cheap, well, gadget. I wanted something I could display with pride on my instrument panel.
Princess Auto had an hour meter in the trailer section for a little less than the sale price of an axle. Bravely I fitted a 2” Forsner bit into my best cordless drill, then perforated an empty anti-freeze container with a series of neat, round holes until I became proficient enough to try the same process on the vinyl dash of my new Princecraft. The drilling went fine. Sardonic comments about the makeup of the Princecraft’s dash are inappropriate at this time*.
Charlie found a pair of wire clusters behind the control unit, tucked into the valence. I felt around with a multi-meter until I located a pair of wires which gave me 12v only when the ignition switch was on. He hooked the gauge up with all of the best crimp-on connectors he could find in his tool boxes.
The little light began to flash with the ignition switch, but the hour meter would not move. Ooops!
Many variations produced no success. It wasn’t until I moved the boat into the shop, removed all of the neat connectors and jury-rigged a power source that I established there was nothing wrong with the meter. My neutral was intermittent. So I ran a new neutral back to the battery, twisted and taped things back together, and the gauge began to work properly.
Everything will be fine unless Dave decides he needs to hook up his computer. I think I took one of its wires to feed the hour meter. I’ll trip over that fence when we come to it.
The first revelation the hour meter provided was that I had greatly overestimated how many hours I was putting on the motor. Some fishing trips on Newboro Lake use only .1 hour of engine time, though most run about .3 hours. It’s not a huge area, and a typical 12 or 13 mile round trip doesn’t take all that long.
So far with an elapsed time of 5 hours I have used up a couple of jerry cans of regular gas (I haven’t learned how to measure mileage yet, but I’ll eventually figure a way and bore you with the details) and added several 2 lb packs of crappie fillets to the freezer hoard, as well as a few meals of largemouth fillets, as well. Generally I keep fish every third time out, but I’m likely bringing home food more often this early in the season to justify the expensive fishing equipment this year.
BTW: the one trip out with the GPS showed a top speed of 50 km for the boat with empty live well and one operator. That’s a hair under 30 mph, and well within the insurance industry’s cut-off for speedboats. At insurance time, be prepared to provide a driving and accident history of each potential driver for any vessel capable of more than 32 mph.
* Said dash has withstood several hits from astonished crappies flying through the air, and was as good as new today after a shot from the pressure washer. The textured vinyl flooring, on the other hand, is hard to clean without the services of said pressure washer. Over the course of two rain-free weeks the floor had become so encrusted with grime from fish and weeds that I hauled the boat home for a facelift. It worked.
Needless to say, the fishing has been good this July.
Roasted bass with basil pesto and garlic breadcrumbs
July 22, 2012
Bet found the recipe in Fine Cooking #66, August, 2004, p. 42. She substituted recently-caught frozen largemouth bass fillets for the recommended cod.
The result was a delight to the senses, though it didn’t take long to finish the entre.
In my opinion this is the best way to serve bass that I have found in fifty or more years of looking.
UPDATE, 4 AUGUST, 2012:
Andre Mallet brought us a box of cod fillets from Halifax, so Bet tried the basil recipe with the recommended species. The entre was good, but we both preferred the bass. Both bunches of fillets had been frozen, though the largemouths were thicker, juicier, and their taste came through more effectively than did the cod.
Maybe local bass aren’t so bad, after all.
The War of 1812-14 is much in the public mind this year. A unique addition to the canon is Consequences of the Battle at Sandy Creek. Neil Thomas tells the story of a young Lieutenant given a commission in the British army by a prominent Kingston merchant, sent on a spying mission by him, then captured and returned to Kingston in an American gun boat under a flag of truce, along with a packet of evidence for his court martial.
But the main narrative frame details the slow recovery of a Canadian journalist from the massacre of his interview subjects on a Peruvian farm at the hands of the guerrilla group Shining Path in 1989. Torn by survivor’s guilt and the shock of a savage beating at the hands of the killers, Alastair MacNeil returns to his grandmother’s home in Kingston, Ontario, where he comes upon a series of documents pertaining to the trial for treason of his ancestor, Lieutenant Cameron MacNeil.
The War of 1812 frame recounts the expedition of Cameron and his men to northern New York State at the request of Kingston merchant Richard Cartwright to collect commercial intelligence. Trade must go on regardless of the presence of armies and gunboats on Lake Ontario, and as Cartwright tells MacNeil, for a trader information is everything.
As Alastair makes his way through his great, great, great, great grandfather’s documents he discovers levels of deceit incomprehensible to his embattled ancestor who carried his belief in the King and Mr. Cartwright all of the way to the gallows.
Through flashbacks to his trauma in Peru, Alastair increasingly leads the reader to conclude that the forces arrayed against Cameron were not unlike those faced by the Peruvian peasants he had encountered: corrupt leaders and insurgents played their games, businessmen made their money, and peasants died grizzly deaths at the hands of the armed men of all three factions.
Author Neil Thomas obviously knows rural Peru. He offers a vivid account of a meal in a peasant’s stone dwelling, explaining how Peruvians freeze and dry potatoes for use as a staple food throughout the year. Another account of a half-day tilling a stony field with a hand tool carries the authority of a writer who has worked the land by hand on several continents. Thomas’s anger toward the Shining Path is evident as well in the dedication where he blames the terrorist group for the death of his environmental journalist friend Barbara d’Achille on May 31, 1989.
So what does the torment of Peruvian peasants in a nameless civil war in the 1980’s have to do with the War of 1812? Thomas infers that both wars were fought largely through the use of terror. It’s a historical fact that Fort Detroit fell to General Brock because its commander was terrified of Tecumseh’s warriors. Tecumseh sided with General Brock and the British because U.S. General Harrison massacred the residents of his home village while the great Indian leader was elsewhere with his men. Harrison later took this proclivity to genocide to Washington as the ninth U.S. President.
Thomas takes the terrors of war and intrigue to another level in the murders of Canadian and American farmers, killed and maimed by partisans in a manner to suggest Indian savagery.
But behind the intrigues and injustices of both story frames lay economic motives and a numbing lack of concern for the rural dwellers and aboriginals who worked, struggled, died, and were easily replaced by their political and economic leaders.
Thomas’s novel is more than a simple work of historical fiction. It is a durable, detailed, and at times comfortable construction, rather like a fine wing chair that invites to you to sit in it.
Available at Amazon.com Books, $14.95 ISBN 978-0-9865914-1-9
“Pink” Mulberry?
June 28, 2012
On the farm in Leeds County, Ontario we have a lot of red mulberry trees growing wild among the black walnuts. One large white mulberry grew below the house, but it was so large and intrusive that I cut the thing a couple of years ago and burned it for firewood. While I enjoy mulberries to eat off the tree, the whites were deceptive: I couldn’t tell from the colour if a berry was green, ripe, or rancid. So off with its head.
Today I came upon a mulberry growing at the side of the upper garden. After it survived a run-over by the lawn mower last year I decided to let it live and see. Its extremely sweet fruit doesn’t resemble either the red or the white mulberry, so I guess it must be a hybrid. My mother and I agree that the berries are superior to those of both parent species, so we’ll have to see how the small tree develops.
More critters and kooks on the Chaffey’s Locks Road
June 14, 2012
In an earlier post I mentioned an intrepid woodchuck who had built a den on the edge of the Chaffey’s Locks Road. No doubt the chuck thought it would be a good location, now that the speed limit on this stretch has been reduced to 60 km/hr. But the maintenance crew has trumped him with a few shovelfuls of asphalt. When I drove by today there was a neat, round hole there, filled to the brim with cold mix asphalt. Take that, you wascally woodchuck!
Every time I have driven on that road recently I have come upon cars stopped on the driving lane. Last trip it was a pair of cars loaded with birdwatchers who had abandoned their vehicles in haste. This time it was some chick in a VW who stopped immediately on a corner to answer a cell phone call. That cell phone law may end up killing somebody if people unfamiliar with roads without shoulders don’t learn to bend the rules and find a safe place before stopping.
On the Clear Lake Road I stopped (in the driving lane, but I put my flashers on) to watch a ruffed grouse which was standing in the middle of the pavement. I shut off to watch. She didn’t seem inclined to leave. Soon a chick burst out of the vegetation and raced across the road. Then another, and so on until five had made the frantic sprint. Then came a straggler who stopped to peck a bit of gravel on the narrow shoulder, then sauntered away from cover, only to panic and dash for safety on the other side. I waited in case there were others. At length a much larger chick emerged, about half grown, and dashed across to join the flock.
Could the older chick be from an earlier nesting of the mother? Do grouse adopt plus-sized orphans? It was definitely a ruffed grouse, though advanced enough in age to have a visible black comb.
Tool Shed
May 15, 2012
It used up almost all of the surplus siding from the garages.
I doubt if plans for shelves will come about before it fills up with shovels, rakes, and Grandma’s garbage pail.
the Walnut Diary 