From September 2002 through August 2003, I turned a residential, three stall garage into a boat shop and built my second boat. The ZenBasser is a 16 foot Garvey which I modified the plans and added raised decking and enclosed compartments to build it in the style of a bass boat. I purchased the plans from Bateau.com and when I checked today, they still use my photo of the finished boat in their promotional materials.
The ZenBasser on christening day
Starting with flat sheets of marine plywood, lots of fiberglass and epoxy, and multiple trips to marine stores, I finished building the boat very near my birthday seven years ago. Rather than christen her with champagne, friends who had coached me through the construction and fishing buddies from around the country sent me bottles of water from their favorite fishing holes, and I sprinkled each over the bow before the inaugural launch and cruise.
This week, my long time friend Donald Winslow is visiting from Austin, Texas and while he works on two projects. He’s writing a book chapter on multimedia and web-based video ethics and he just published the August issue of News Photographer magazine, we’re squeezing in some fishing around Two Mile Ranch.
The last time we went fishing was two years ago in June, with the ZenBasser, on a lake in Oklahoma. You know the one, “where the winds come sleeping down the plains”. Yes, that one. On the lake, the ramp was about a mile or so by water from the dock where we tied up near our cabin. That weekend, the wind was so severe, that it bashed the boat around and the rough, wet trip back to the dock left me drenched and through a combination of things, caused some minor cosmetic damage to a few items on the boat.
When I returned to Two Mile, I parked the boat next to the barn with full intent of repairing her. Over time, wind, rain, snow and leaves took their toll on her beauty. The aging batteries failed, and she hasn’t moved since that weekend 2 years ago. Always intending to fix it, I was still able to fish nearly every day on one of the two ponds here so the boat moved lower on the fix-it priority list
With Winslow’s return, and a string of vacation days, I decided it was time to put the boat back in the water. Two days ago we filled the trailer tires with air and pulled her out into the drive and began repairs. First, I emptied 5 gallons of the old gas out of the tank. Even with fuel stabilizer, there was no sense in struggling with bad gas in an attempt to start the motor.
We took the boat to the local drive-through car wash and hosed out 90 percent of the detritus living on a farm can produce. I charged one of the aged batteries enough to have enough power to test the electrical system. Once connected, all the electrical circuits worked.
Yesterday morning, I had some work to do in the city and so while there, Winslow and I bought a set of new batteries, returned to Two Mile, hooked everything up, and drove to a lake near hear.
Zinger, the Two Mile Ranch Aussie Shepard, Winslow, and I climbed aboard and I started the motor. It turned over on the first crank, and with the third crank, was running and steady and quiet idle. After a few minutes of idling at the dock, we put the boat in gear and spent the rest of the night fishing the 900 acre lake. Zinger was slightly spooked by the sound of the motor for the first few minutes, but soon settled into the boat seat, nose pointed in the air. As we chose various fishing holes and came to a stop, she would walk around the deck, from front to back, following the lures, and and watching the water. Once we came under a tree with two turkey vultures, she barked orders to them to leave.
The only mishap of the otherwise ideal day came as the result of a bad cast on my part. It was Winslow’s birthday, and as host and guide, it was my job to assure he caught his birthday bass. We cruised up to mid lake and entered a cove filled with flooded timber. I pitched my line up against a small shrub against the shore and on my retrieval, I accidentally caught the bass intended to be Winslow’s birthday fish.
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