Weather was windy during the day on both Friday and Saturday, pouring rain and high wind during the night Saturday. Bonny and Irwin did a great job on providing good food for lunch on Friday and Saturday, as usual. Other than the Wind, the weather on Friday was perfect for the cruise by Casey.
Bob and Valerie Smith had a problem with their red top 35 HP Mercury quitting on their beautiful AristoCraft about 3/4 of the way up river during the cruise. The motor just refused to restart. Ron Shady stopped by to help and ended up towing them about 100 yards downriver toward our meet site when Bob decided to once again try to start the motor. Wala!!! It started up and ran perfectly as Ron followed them in his 1970 Glastron/Evinrude the rest of the way to the meet launch ramp. Also, Ron had 3 friends from Ocala visit our meet on Saturday----they enjoyed lunch as well as the comradery and wealth of information they obtained by walking around looking at the various motors, boats, and parts displays, and engaging in conversations with many of our members. Thanks to all who made these 3 gentlemen feel at home.
George had mentioned at the meet that he was taking pictures of my new roof top tent (RTT) for the newsletter, so here's some info about it.
It is the Adventurer XL model of Centori Outdoors' line of hard top roof tents, manufactured in Texas.
It mounts on the roof rails of automobiles, SUVs, jeeps, etc. and has a ABS shell top (Figure 1618) that, upon release, raises by itself via a pair of pressurized air struts to expose the tent.
A ladder inside the tent pulls out horizontally and is used as leverage to rotate a folded honeycomb floor out to give a total of about 50 sq. ft. of inside floor space (Figure 1611) that is covered by a comortable 2" thick foam mattress.
The Centori Outdoors Roof Top Tent has a waterproof zippered moon roof to watch the stars; zippered screen enclosures on both windows as well as the entrance for air circulation;
velcro attached clear plastic windows; as well as zippered window/entrance enclosures for protection from rain and wind. (Both were experienced at the Yellow Jacket meet in April!!!
The advantage this Hard Shell Roof Top Tent offers is that your hotel room is right on top of your car so that you can still tow a boat to our AOMCI meets, and have a place to sleep right at the meet site as well. A porta-potty, a small fan, and a sleeping bag completes the hotel room for a good night's sleep. A future modification in the works is to modify a small window Air Conditioner to supply cool, low moisture air inside the RTT for a comfortable night's sleep in Florida's high humidity summers.
completes the hotel room for a good night's sleep. A future modification in the works is to modify a small window Air Conditioner to supply cool, low moisture air inside the Roof Top Tent for a comfortable night's sleep in Florida's high humidity summers.
-by Ron Shady in FL
Suwannee FL trip