Aquarius's first memorable fishing trip was 12-2012. Many upgrades, work, and testing had been done prior to this point after purchase. After some initial streamlining of bottom, weight removal, and boat showing reliability to this point, we started to find some fishing spots. We kept traveling further with added distance from shore, 20-30 miles out and we were finding spots that were producers. We fished many weekends until April 2013, and then Bamm
we hydroed the port engine because of a leaky aftercooler feeding seawater directly into the intake of 3 cylinders ( See engine photos). Pistons do not compress water very well. For those of you that live up North (where winterizing is a requirement), make sure the guy winterizing your engines knows what he is doing. If seawater is left in aftercoolers and other coolant parts of engine with no winterizer, it can explode from ice expansion! If you notice that an engine is running abnormally cool, it may be a sign that something is over cooling the engine, like seawater in the intake!
So we used this 2nd drydock time frame to fabricate and install a custom cored fiberglass swim platform w fiberglass knees, a custom cored fiberglass bow sprit, and purchase and install a used Tamd 41a engine that could be used as a spare if problems were to ever happen again. While the spare engine was swapped and running in boat we would complete a rebuild to the original hydroed port engine. The spare engine was a blessing and with last minute help from family changing engine over we were off to Abaco Bahamas with a running boat for some Conch, Fish, Rum and fun and with upgrades.
During the 2013 thru 2015 years, there was much enjoyment while fishing, diving and cruising with Aquarius as can be witnessed in our photos but it seemed like many times we went out, repairs would need to be completed before the next trip. Upgrading was fun, maintenance was not! Next Webpage (2014-2016).