| Family hovertrip. | |||
| First time for our 1,5yr daughter to travel in a hovercraft. Would have happened lot sooner, but didn't want to get her onboard until i was sure we'd had no problems during our run. And this time we had a back-up vehicle just in case everything does not go like planned - Yes the 5hp Yamaha outboard. At least we would get her safely home if we had to. | |||
| Weather has been beatiful for the most of my holiday: Just sun shine and 25C (77F) temperatures and this day surely wasn't an exception. | |||
| We had the lunch packed as well as swimming gear and fishing rods. Plan was to head to Sandö cape just some kilometers NE from hoverport. At the northern side of that cape there is a good place for swimming. Not sand but small round rocks and low gradient. Also no access with car and good temporary hoverport. Problem is the southern and eastern side which is rough sea if there is wind. | |||
| But there wasn't too much wind and we got there really fast. Engine responded to throttle everytime and our daughter sat on her mothers lap and wasn't atleast afraid. Actually she fell asleep just before we landed, but woke immediately when i turned off the engine. Our average speed was around 30km/h (19mph) topping about 40km/h (25mph). It was nice to breath the sea air again. | |||
| Jenni, our daughter, and Jaana, my wife, went for swim and i tried to clean the craft little bit. We hang out on the beach for a while since it took some time to my father- and mother-in-law to get there with their small outboard. My father-in-law also took a short swim and after that we all headed to close by island for fishing and lunch. | |||
| While taking off throttle response issue raised it head again, but we got there just fine. This time craft was left floating rather than landing ashore. | |||
| There was no fish in the sea though, but lunch tasted great. Soon it was time to get back, since sun was shining and none of us wanted to burn our skin, least our young daughter. | |||
| Purging the skirt took some time and throttle response seemed to be worse, but we got over hump OK and soon passed couple of boats. I noticed wind had increased some but not too much for our craft. Allthough together with not reaching the max rpm we dropped below the hump speed when going around the cape point heading headwind. | |||
| This time it was harder to increase rpm. Maybe head wind effected some, but it was really difficult to gain speed. But once we got over the hump i took the straightes route to hoverport cutting turns where normal boat traffic would take. We got back safely, but it's not particularly fun to notice that everything doesn't work as it should. Maybe we still need to adjust that main jet, perhaps rotate it a bit. | |||
| When we got back we unpacked the craft and i took couple of test spins solo to see if there is something to be noted of the engine problems. It seems that response problem occur every 3rd or 4th time i throttle, but it's not that consistent. Sometimes it responses fine, but after few secends rpms are decreased and actually decreasing throttle slightly increases rpm. But it works by pumping throttle few or more times, but so far it always works at last. | |||