On a scale of one to ten points, I’d give Victoria Day Weekend 2010 a seven.

First, the negatives. There was an absolute fire ban in effect for all districts north of the French River. Right there, that’s an immediate minus two points. No campfire means no long yarns, no mutual recapping of the day, and a lack of true camaraderie. Especially with the gorgeous weather, staying indoors at night only because there was no campfire was a brutal hit to an otherwise magnificent weekend. But it’s true; no one wants to stand out in the dark with no fire.

I can’t deduct any points for the lack of fishing because, for one, the Suzuki motor lived up to its expectations but didn’t exceed them, and for another, whoever wanted to go fishing could easily take a rental out to wherever they wanted… mostly. Which leads to a half-point deduction for the extremely low water levels. We had a tough time getting ourselves into the boats at the docks, never mind into Cache Bay and its potential pike bonanza. This may have had something to do with the terrible fishing; I caught a 20-inch pike, and a friend of my cousin nailed an eating-size walleye on the morning of the last day. Fishing is usually bad on the opener, but even by Victoria Day Weekend standards, this Weekend was pretty bad.

Another half-point is lost for the dual reason that I am a pessimist by nature, and I am also a Computer Scientist: I don’t round, I truncate. And so, that’s a seven out of ten on my completely arbitrary grading scale.

Highlights include an intense Texas Horseshoe tournament; watching the Habs lose on a 50-inch big-screen TV on the front deck hooked up to an air antenna; all the work that the new lodge owners are putting into the place (new docks, levelling the cottage, redoing the driveways, etc); and the unbelievably balmy weather (this is the first time in the history of the Victoria Day Weekend fishing trips that the temperature has consistently been both sunny and above 10 degrees).

My lower back and shoulders are roasted.

The Suzuki is the ideal motor for the Walleye Whacker. However, it has some fully-expected issues. One such issue is that the shifter cables need adjusting. It doesn’t shift fully into reverse, causing some pretty severe gear-grinding. It’s also either running too rich, or the coils on the motor need replacing. After putting new spark plugs in, and running the motor for ten minutes, they were already covered in oil. Using the ripcord all weekend was an annoyance.

But when it was running, it ran, and ran well. With three people in the boat, it topped out at around 50kph; almost twice as fast as the 20hp Mercury, all else equal.

The issues are due half to the motor not being consistently used for past few years, and half because it simply is on a new boat: it just needs some tweaking and adjustments.

After a backbreaking weekend of work, we removed the old dashboard and put in a brand-spanking-new one out of special pine board, and covered it with aluminum. In the center of the dash is the new marine stereo I got for my birthday. It’s gonna be amazing when it’s finished.

I won’t be writing for a while since I’m heading north for four days on Friday. Cheers until then.