Hi Martin, Geoff and anyone else that is still on here.

New boat was finally handed over last Saturday and I brought her home from Plymouth to Brixham in the late afternoon.

On the final stretch I briefly gave her full throttle and was amazed to see 30.8 knots hit. I never expected anything like that!

I am very impressed by how stable she was at speed, she was also quiet and smooth, but I would imagine the five bladed props help in the smoothness.

The props have considerable bite too and on sea trial she hit 20 knots from rest, in just under eight seconds.

Now I know Lochins aren't speed boats, but they are very capable of speed too, but you need a lot of power in the first place.

As we travel to fish distant wrecks, the speed means we can get there quickly and spend more time catching fish....hopefully!!

Tomorrow the first trip is planned, hope we can christen her with some fish.

Cheers.

Dave

Hi.

Just bought a new boat cover for my Lochin........the quality is lacking a little though!!

Hi Martin.

The cover did its job of keeping seagull sh.t off the deck while it was repainted with flow coat.

There was a patch that had been touched in after a spillage and it never matched properly so my builder did the whole deck again. Looks much better now.

Been out on a few trips recently, had Pollack to around 12lb, cod, similar and Ling around the 18lb mark.  Nothing huge, but welcome.

The engines are bedding in nicely and I am really pleased with how she goes, although I always knew she would burn fuel!!  The computer gives me an indication of the fuel used for a given engine speed and at 30 knots we are using around 130 litres an hour (GULP), or we would be if I ran her at that speed, which of course I don't.

I usually run between 20and 22 knots which burns around the 85-90 litres an hour mark.

As my boat is for pleasure purposes I have to pay the extortion rate. I cant exactly remember what my marina is charging, but around £1.12 a litre I believe, so not cheap on 1600 litre fill ups!!!!!

Sounds like LJ is earning her keep well with all the wildlife trips and at just 8 litres an hour, that's really good..... I could probably make it to the end of Brixham breakwater on that.

There are huge pods of dolphins around at the moment. We saw one a couple of weeks ago that must have been a third of a mile long and they were on a mission going somewhere at speed. They passed us by and just kept coming for ages.....lovely to see.

Hope the weather stays good for your trips and I hope you can get some fishing in as well.

Cheers.

Dave