I don't know if they still do this, but Garmins Blue Water Nav charts used to die after a year. .
Then you had to go to Garmin, pay them $100 and get an unlock code for the upgrade or even make it work again. The blue water chart would come up, let you know it had expired and needed to be renewed, take up the limited memory in the plotter and you either paid the $100 or deleted it out of the unit.
Garmin had a Lakes chart on an SD card as well. They got my attention when I spent the bucks to upgrade that and then found out it was a waste of money because they were discontinuing that program.

Since USFWS and ODFW started screwing around with the fishing seasons, limits and shut down Stonewall Bank to all bottom fishing, we don't go out on the ocean that much anymore anyway. Makes maintenance on the boat much simpler and less expensive. Still troll for Salmon and we'll make a couple of halibut trips, but they have made my favorite 'but holes "off limits" now. Wouldn't want to have an incidental Yellow eye or Canary rock fish (species of red snapper) catch. Supposedly endangered unless you go south to California, then they are not endangered.

 

i hear that! garmin has always been that way, both boats we have "the 48 and 23 footers " were swapped out for furuno electronics

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quote "...dig out the big check book..." Those are bad words, hate it when that happens. Maybe there's a rich starter-pilot there to buy your plane and take on those costs. I suppose owning a plane is about as maintenance-costly as a boat. A hole in the (air/water) that sucks in money lol. end quote

rex this bird is light sport, more so for us old timers who can't pass the physical for private any more, we only need a valid DL and the normal 40 hours to get certified , limited to day time only flights, 1320 pounds total weight ,"plane alone weighs 850" 1 passenger, 120 knots top speed. this one a jabiru j230 is one of 3 ready to fly as light sport that are built in the usa,

 

I've thought about a Furuno electronics package, but just can't justify the expense. If I spent as much time on the ocean as my cousin did, I'd have had a radar years ago. Been a couple of times coming in in zero visibility fog that a radar would have been nice, but the GPS plotter brought us right down the buoy line and through the center of the jaws. The first time I had to do that, I discovered that it probably wasn't a bad idea to deliberately plug a few feet of off set into the buoy line. Had my son up on the bow watching, and we picked up the entrance buoy just a few feet before hitting it. Didn't think that was too bad as the GPS back then were supposed to only be within 15 meters I was just barely making headway so it wasn't a problem of colliding with it, but it did make for a few interesting minutes of the GPS counting down from 100' to 15' before we actually got a visible.

Don't have to worry about a 48'. Like I always have told the Warden, we wouldn't be able to afford to start the engines, let alone get her out of the harbor.

Just downsized our 23 to a 22.5. #ad
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Interesting how, when I take a tape measure to it, it actually measures out to longer than our 23'. But, that is fine by me. The State Marine Board shows it as a 22 and since they charge by the foot for your certificate of number.....shorter is better.

My cousin has a big boat that lives at Depot Bay. When we want to go a long ways out, we take his. Last trip after Tuna with 5 souls on board came out to $150 per person for the fuel shares. Ended up with about $1000 worth of Tuna so I made fuel money back from family members who wanted some albacore and still ended up with about 30 pints of Tuna for ourselves.

 

Coffee candybar this morning, 2nd cup. I re-discovered that drinking black & bitter doesn't start my engine anymore. So back to adding sugar or cocoa for the caffeine to run on.

The fishing talk got me hungry. For eating fish, not catching, lol. My sister lives in Alaska and goes pole-fishing(?) from a river's shores during salmon runs. She says it can't miss, the salmon are so packed, if she wasn't catching them the bears would be. Pulled a couple of fillets out of the freezer.


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Just plain mild coffee this morning. Warden is adding Caramel to hers...
Trying to decide if I want to go out in the rain and work under the tarp or stay in the house, finish up our taxes, get the MIL's estate and tax information ready for the accountant and watch the race. One thing seems certain, no mowing the lawn today.

 

Oh yeah. Taxes. Mine are easy now and easy to put off. Thanks for the reminder, I just set a "tax alarm" on the computer to bug me every day.

I was just looking at the lawn too, about 6-7 inches tall and sodden.

 

I'm thinking I may have to go out to the farm and bring some horses in for the back yard and goats for the front yard.

Our taxes have been pretty easy. We haven't had enough deductions for long form for 3 or 4 years now. I've used Turbo Tax every year since the 1993 tax year. Farm taxes are done at an accountant.
Next year will be a little more complicated and we will be back into the long form, schedule A and other schedules, but we'll see how that goes. Part of my problem, with the tax program on the computer, is that I have a tendency to do them several times using different filings to see which works out the best. Not sure why I bother, it has only worked out once where there was a better advantage than what the computer recommended.

 

I don't have horses and goats but the deer and rabbits are trying hard

Same here with taxes. When they were hard then TurboTax dealt with the long form. Used HR Block a couple of times but their results were the same. Then H&R spammed me for a year or two after i cancelled them.

Allright, I'm fired up enough now to either do taxes or wander out to the shop and see if i want to reweld the forklift tines.

 

All this talk about taxes had worn me out. Think I'll put them away for a bit and go do something fun. Like, maybe go sit under the tarp at the helm of the boat with the lap top connected to You Tube on the WiFi, the instruction manual for the new Sonar & Cart Plotter and once again subject myself to the learning curve.

 

Came back inside for coffee and decided on some hot apple cider instead. Pretty well water logged and going to change to some dry clothes as well. To say it has been raining is a gross understatement.

 

I took the cleaner choice and did the taxes. My other job not near as interesting as learning a new nav plotter and all the goodies.
This rain is getting realdikulous -- N. Puget Sound is already in all-time 3th most rain since January 1. But in-between the deluges we've had some really nice days.

Was it raining hard enough to test the new sonar?

 

O.K., did the coffee thing. Followed up with some Hot Apple Cider. Sounded good for a change. Now I can't get the hint of apple cider out of the coffee cup. I may have to let it soak in bleach water or something for half a day. Then it will take me a year or so to get it the thing properly seasoned again!

Darned near. Got a familiarization around the menu's, watched it in demo/simulation mode for a bit was able to tweak a couple of things from there and decided that some of the features even the simulation mode wasn't going to hack it. Going to have to get it on the water......

 

"properly seasoned" coffee mug the right brown film inside adds the right taste.

My FIL made hard apple cider fermented in the cellar. It was a fair amount of work and made for woozy family reunions.
He was a retired Army master sergeant, then worked as a machinist and retired again from a Tool and Die shop in Massachussetts.

Then retired to the family farm in Maine. Built a wooden sailboat, with cabin, from the ground up. Took us out sailing in the Bay of Fundy, beautiful, and we circled that big-arse whirlpool there that comes and goes with the tide.

More Springtime stuff here. Trimmed the ivy on the shop wall -- what the deer couldn't reach. They really like China Blue and Moroccan ivies. Or anything edible. They cleaned out the asparagus long ago, i don't want a fence in the yard there so they can have it.

 

Beans, apple orchard and strawberries are a favorite for the deer around here........sweat tooth I guess. They are death on tomatoes too!