Article by Capt. Steve Katz
Congratulations to all tournament participants and winners last week.
Fishing three days and pushing the 100 mile limit results in over 600 miles traveled, plus trolling all day makes for a long day and week for anglers, crew and your boat. Your boat has to endure these trips and be quickly maintained as needed on the lay-days. Working to support tournament participants, each year there are familiar trends for service and repairs during the week.
Based on my service calls and dockside observations, electrical trouble calls are the most popular, primarily for battery systems.
The compressed fishing schedules this time of year often brings lurking issues to the surface. For example, when boats go chunking for tuna and shut off their engines causes the ships batteries to work overtime, often not on a battery charger, which can cause excessive draw that can quick discharge a mediocre battery. Any battery system that is not at 100% will show its flaws when fishing tournaments. A thorough check and test should be done in the beginning of the season to help assure the batteries can be maintained throughout the season.
Most quality marine batteries will provide ample performance for 3-5 years if cared for properly.
Wiring problems are another popular trend needing service during fishing tournaments. It seems that Captains and crew use all available electrical devices, such as radios, radar and electric reels, during a tournament. Deficiencies in the size, quality and cleanliness of the wiring system can cause problem with critical equipment. For example, most VHF radios are rated at their maximum power when supplied with 13.8 volts. Many boats I visit have a lower voltage at the radio when the other helm electronics are powered on and even lower voltage when transmitting, reducing your transmission distance. If your VHF supply voltage is low, upgrading the wiring and assuring the supplied power is correct can drastically help improve your VHF performance. Experience has shown that the main wire feeding the helm is often too small, especially after years of upgrades, causing an excessive voltage drop on system components. An easy way to resolve this for the VHF radio is to run a separate properly fused circuit from the source of power (ships batteries, etc) directly to the VHF radio, bypassing the helm distribution panel. This allows the maximum battery voltage to reach the VHF radio, providing improved performance.
With so many anglers and crew on-bard, the marine head (toilet) seems to get use more than ever during tournament week. This can easily show deficiencies in your systems such as holding tanks that are too small, pumps that wear out and the ever popular foreign objects clogging the plumbing lines. Having spare parts that fit your system, such as the duckbill valve, joker valve, macerator pump and other specialty parts on-board will make a service or repair easier and much faster.
While modern navigation electronic hardware seem to be less prone to failure than in the past, having a back-up copy of your waypoints and knowing what hardware makes up you system, along with the location of the popular components will help speed up troubleshooting and repair your system if service is needed.
With most boats heading out in the dark, proper navigation lighting is a must. The proliferation of LED navigation lights is great for the consumer, lots of choices, but when it comes time to replace a non-functional LED light, often the whole fixture needs to be replaced. Just today I contacted the manufacturer of a popular flush mount hardtop light and they indicated there is a 4-6 week lead time to get one of these lights, who can wait four weeks during the prime fishing season for a simple navigation light?
Having the correct parts is always important when something goes wrong. It seems this week is good for the shipping companies; the number of next day air shipments arriving at the local marinas and businesses is amazing. Parts from every type of supplier, along with service trucks and manufacturers representatives converge in Ocean City to be ready to support the 300+ tournament boats. If you have a critical or unique system on-board it is wise to carry the necessary spare parts when practical. Returning to the dock at 6pm and needing to be ready again in less than 10 hours does not allow for much time to shop for parts. One of my customers has a boat overstocked with spare parts, while he may not be able to install the parts himself, he know he can always find a technician who can. If you can’t carry all the spare parts you desire, at least put together a list of the make and model of critical system components, like toilets, batteries, lighting, specialty electronic components, and of course engine and generator parts.
Along with rigging baits, preparing fishing gear, provisioning the boat, having the correct maintenance parts and system knowledge will help you have a successful fishing tournament.
Captain Steve Katz is the owner of Steve’s Marine Service and holds NMEA, AMEI and NMEA2000 certificates along with ABYC Master Technician certification and factory training from many manufacturers.
