First trip on the summer of fun agenda was our 3rd trip to watch Starship launch out of Boca Chica. But this time we hauled down the big ass fishing boat and hoped to watch the launch from the water.
We have been fixing up this old donated ski boat for many years. It’s one of those crazy projects that seems a little adventuresome and amusing at first, and then you just keep it going because you have already put so much work into it. Our fishing vessel is mockingly known as an inboard outboard outboard, with a third electric trolling motor mounted on the bow.
For those of you that need a long winded refresher on the type of boat and boat engineer, here it goes. An inboard boat has a big car like engine mounted inside the boat, with a streight drive shaft to the propelly in the water. These types of boat have regained popularity with the wake boarding crowd, as they can make bigger wakes. Most ski boats are I/O or inboard/outboard. They have the big car like engine inside the boat, but they connect to an outdrive that can move up and down with a trim. Our boat is a traditional I/o, inboard outboard. An outboard boat, is the boat engine that is common on smaller boat and fishing boats. It’s the gas engine that bolts on the back of boat. smaller ones you can take on and off. We built a large metal bracket and put an additional outboard motor on our ski boat. This is typically not done. We did this to have a better trolling motor, and to have a backup motor when we take her out into the open ocean.
I would like to take credit for coining the term inboard, outboard, outboard, but I wasn’t that clever. One summer day on lake LBJ I was pulling my I/O/O through a very small finger of the lake with a rope, out of the crappy lake house doc we had rented. This crap stick of a place was more of a creek and the boat barely fit down it. Anyway, as I slowly made the turn some old timer was on his doc and saw me and said “Holy shit darling, come take a look. This young fella has himself and inboard, outboard, outboard”. Comedy gold!After a few test drives at the lakes around Austin and a new trailer, I was pumped to get the old project into the bay to watch the rocket launch. We made it down a day early and did our online scouting to find the launches best suited for fishing and rocket launch watching. The wind and seas were rough going out our on the test drive, Both the I/O and O had real trouble and we barely made it back home. Our electric trolling motor and batter packs while overkill for our boat on the lakes were not strong enough to fight the rough waters in the bay. We would have to watch the Rocket launch from the beach.
While most people would call this officially a failure, I did catch 3 fish, and we didn’t get towed home. I call any fishing trip a success when I put the boat back in the boat shed. One should never underestimate how hard it is to be a boat captain and your own boat mechanic. To pour a little salt in the wounds, for the first time the weather was really cloudy for the starship launch and all we could barely see was a faint fireball when the rocket launched. From the space X perspective, the rocket performed to spec for the first time. There is serious consideration the next launch they will attempt to land the big heavy back on the starebase. I can’t wait to see that.
