My boat - reminiscing
With the recent diletion of Ngavdba's posts I have been thinking a lot about this forum. I read the rules for posts, and one of them one that post in all catagories except supra families should be about boats and boating. This one is. I have wanted an Inboard Ski boat since about 1982. I owned a Correct Craft Mustang in the early eighties. It was under powered by a four cylinder Renault engine with twin single barrel carbs. While I had fun with the boat it sucked for skiing and any other water sport activity. I would see the guys with the Ski Nautiques having way more fun, that 8 cylinder seemed the way to go.
So when my wife and I started boating with some friends a couple years ago, their 6 cylinder I/O reminded me of my old Mustang. We started talking about getting our own boat and I said I was all for it, as long as it could be an Inboard Ski Boat. So I began the search. And quickly found my 1989 Supra Pirata. It was a couple of hours a way in Cleveland. I went to look at it and instantly was in love. I knew it needed work, but was fooled by him into thinking it was a solid boat.
Thinking it was just going to need upholstery I took it to a local shop when I got it home and quickly learned about rotten stringers. I was pretty much in a state of panic. I don't remember how exactly I found this forum, but I did. And while I was panicking I posted about my problems here. And the first person to respond was Ngavdba. He quickly calmed my nerves and assured my that many of the members here have been through the same thing. And he gave me Donny Bennett's phone number. After talking to Donny I was able to patch my boat up enough to gingerly make it through my first year leaving the stringers alone.
All through last year I was quite envious of all the boats that had already been done. And when I would talk to friends and family about my supra, I would always tell them about Daniel's boat. I had read most of his posts and was very impressed by how meticulously he had redone his boat. How the boat had been in his family since new. How he had pictures of it through the years. By the garage he built to house it in. How it wasn't just a garage, it was a boat mansion. A place any boat would be happy to call home. All of this detailed and documented on the forum. All of which I spent many hours reading and looking at picture. Showing the pictures to members of my family, and my friends.
Started to feel like I knew him, even though I had barely communicated with him through the forum.
Then I had the opportunity to attend the 2013 Supra Southern Reunion. I had intended on going in 2012, but the stars didn't align for me. But I knew I wasn't going to miss the next one.
Attending that was the highlight of owning my Supra so far. It was very cool seeing so many supras together. Hadn't really seen any other older supra in person on the water. And the T-shirt and stickers that Daniel put together for the event are some of my prize posessions. The couple of days spent together was a blast. The hightlight getting to surf behind a newer supra and helping Daniel learn to surf for the first time.
Some of the other highlights of owning my Supra has been the Wake The World events I have attended with my supra. I learned about those through the forum also.
The many hours my wife and I have spent together on the boat have brought us closer together. And we are looking forward to the years to come and enjoying our boat even more.
And had it not been for this forum and Ngavdba I don't believe things would be quite the same. I was pretty set on taking the Pirata back to the person I bought it off of and telling him what to do with it. Especially after finding a post on here started a year before I bought the boat from someone else that was thinking about going and looking at it.
That being said:
My understanding is that a moderator accidently deleted all of Ngavdba's posts. While Ngavdba may have violated a rule of the forum, I don't believe that the appropriate action was to delete his entire history.
I feel that if this is the case there needs to be a safety measure in place for the moderators. Perhaps it should require two moderators to permanately remove all of someones history. That way this won't happen in the future.
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2006 24SSV 8.1 Vortec
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