OUTLAW EAGLE MANUFACTURING

[Xerophobic]

You guessed it, just got in from yet another tunnel adventure.

We ran the Nottawasaga river that flows into Georgian bay at the popular summer spot, Wasaga beach, an hour or so north of Toronto.
This river starts off wide and packed with cottages altho suprisingly shallow in spots. There is also oddly enough a 50 Km limit in the main part of the river(it looks like it should be a no wake zone to be honest)
Once the cottages start to fade out the river winds quite a ways south. We knew from exploring by car that jetskiers had run to a conservation area about 45 mins up river. They said there were alot of deadheads but nothing too technical. I assume the river was higher a few weeks ago cause no way a jetski could run that part now. We likely pissed off a number of salmon fisherman running thru some pretty skinny bottom scraping sections. We finally made it to the conservation area and continued to press south. We had not been able to talk to anyone about this section nor can it be veiwed from any roads.
It got interesting in a big hurry! There was a TON of wood in the river and let me tell ya you can jump some pretty serious logjams in a 21 tunnel LOL
I figured we'd get screwed so many times and we 'd have to run back but we kept making it thru stuff. We finally came to a serious logjam that was probably 100 feet deep and completely unpassable. We had a beer and turned back.
A great day of boating and no pushing!
The tunnel did hook a little hard one time and I couldn't save it fast enough but did manage to shut it down before running comletely up onshore lol We did almost swamp the rear of the hull and its the only time both bilge pumps have been used/needed.
We did get some cool shots and a little digital camera video which I will hopefully have later tonight.

Im simple in awe that a boat capable of doing 70-80+ mph one min can do what my boat did today, unreal! I would never have guessed the tunnel could run such a technical area and do alright at it. At times we had a few feet either side of the hull to make it thru the trees/deadwood. I think they are gonna start calling me Rellick! LOL

Vince are you making just a race DVD or another mixed one? We're gonna run some rivers again with full video next time.


Cheers

p.s. hopefully we can get my passenger Patrick to join the forum, I found him surfing the NZ forum and he's just purchased a rare 70's Hamilton jetboat here in Toronto . I'm pretty sure he's also hooked on the river thing now too! lol

[Clark]

Fantastic stuff! Cant wait to see the pics.

[Snikwah]

Did you get many dents in you hull while clearing the log jams?

Peter

[Cavefish]

I am enjoying reading about your adventures- exploring shallow creeks and rivers is one thing but doing it with a race tunnel is something else entirely! You must be getting a real journeyman's education into what the boat is capable of besides screaming up and down the river. I agree totally with the comment "Fantastic!".

I tried to find reference to it back in the forum, but couldn't, do you have a steel bottom on that Eagle?

[ntjetboater]

Xerophobic,

Rapid Runner 2 is in the works, and my adrenaline started pumping reading your story, so by all means, send tapes and I will get them back asap..with a copy of something I am working on.
Not too many people run their tunnels like that, but they are a tough hull and can take some wicked hits.

vince

[Xerophobic]

Thats great news Vince from both a willing contributor standpoint and an axious viewer! Lets hope the interest stirred by the first video will get alot more people to send in their clips and footage. I'm guessing it doesn't matter how long/short it is as long as its a jetboat and interesting! I'd love to see you put together a package twice as long as the last one or more

I have a 10MB clip in my email from yesterday I could send someone who could mash it down to post or somehow host it somewhere maybe? I admit Im not that great with video clips at this stage! Its not the most tech section but its kinda cool. Looks like racing video #6 the way you see the eagle dash now and again haha

Hopefully Patrick will have a little more time tonight to figure out how to send me the rest of the footage/pics

Cave, yes my tunnel has the QT100 package and I was going to say I wouldn't attempt this stuff if it didn't but thats probably a lie lol I would, being more careful most likely as this is just simply the only alloy hull i have to try this stuff. The boat does also have the forward UHMW sponsor runners altho I don't think I have scraped them much at all yet.

I think I have found a donar car with a FI 302 dirty cheap which I will likely grab for an eventual purpose built riverboat. I like the idea of injection and the 302/5.0 is easily mod'd and light/small. Get me a pump and I will build a hull 15 feet-ish, if that

I am really quite surprised at what we've gotten thru and at what speeds(quite slow at times) The tunnel does seem to run reasonable flat even going slow and its always nice to be able to punch the big block to run when its really shallow. Often we'll carry thru things cleanly when Im suire we'll hit. I have started to manually lock the trim in a more neutral position for river running to make planning much faster and doable in shallower water.


Vince you're right the tunnel seems incredibly strong especially in the center pod area where most contact has been. We did hit one object yesterday which I did not see and it really tugged quite hard to the drivers side. Im not sure if this was a well placed rockstrike or a dead head but it did wake me up! I think you'lll see in the videos most of the wood was covered at pretty low speeds. I am looking forward the new motor and being able to really open the boat up in parts of the river that are wide, stright and otherwise "boring"

I picked up the shortblock tonight, heads tomorrow, Waterbreakin of the new motor likely starting saturday. 80's here I come!


Cheers

[Xerophobic]

Oh and Peter the best part is, hehe Nope no visable damage to the hull at all. The interior was a muddy mess but thats why we have pressure washers right? lol Did notice an area beside the QT on the centerpod, the anglebar bit, thats gettin a bit scraped up so I may add a steel part there to prevent aluminum wear but other than that the steeland bottom looks fine.
Really wish we could have gotten video of the hipwader guys scrambling out of the way! I am not really into fishing so I guess, much like them, I just don't "get" the other hobby


Cheers

p.s. just for the record here I think its important to mention we passed a TON of people on the river that day and I did make every effort to stay as clear from canoe's and other boats as possible, often running at the extreme other bank etc. Im sure many people were as surprised to see how close to shore I ran as they were to see me period. I certainly reduced speed when I could and in 2 cases got off plane entirely even when I was not sure what problems that may cause me. I didn't notice any boats to seem annoyed with me but did get some nasty looks gestures from some guys fishing. I guess thats to be expected to a degree but I certainly wasn't flaunting the boat when close to them. Regretfully I did likely cause some minor panic in technical areas as I guess they are both popular for me and anglers. I can atribute some of that to just having never seen the likes a of a boat capable of travelling those areas, much less one 21 feet long! Obviously boat speed must be kept up in the shallows.
I did get my share of guys who seemed to think it was the coolest thing ever and that always feels good cause it is
At one point we stopped to ask a guy on the bank what river we were on(i thought I had made a wrong turn) THAT guys expression was classic!

[Xerophobic]

here's the lone digital still of the run. This was after the stupid "spinout"
By the time Patrick got the cam workin the bilge pumps had stopped. LOL
the boat was origionally sitting about 5 feet further up the bank and the waterline was right at the wing on the transom. Kinda funny the way it happened but totally my fault, ovr correcting when the tunnel hooked a bit in an easy part of river! Man things happen fast when you're doing this stuff
Oh well gave the photographer time to have a beer and smoke
<shrugs>

[Xerophobic]

Im startiun to get emails from Patrick now. Most of the clips are huge files but Im impressed with the quality video his camera takes.
I can post only one thats less than 2 mb and its a bad one cause the camera hit a tree branch and had something on the lens that made it blurry. Oh well it gives you an idea of what we were up against.
Its gonna be nice to start filming all my runs so I can remember what happened! You get so busy driving the boat you hardly noticve how beautiful the scenery is!
Cheers

(cue up "Burn" by Mad at Gravity....)

[ntjetboater]

Xerophobic,
I too would love the next video to be twice as long, unfortunately I spent a few weeks travelling and filming the racers this year and only got into the mountains a couple of times. I have about 4 back country tapes and 34 race tapes to edit

you can email the 10 mb stuff @
vhalushka@auroracollege.nt.ca

Send tapes guys.
Karey get yer navigator to send me some of the tapes we discussed at the banquet.

[Clark]

Vince I have some more new footage I'll send you in the coming weeks.

[Fritz]

Great stuff Xerophobic keep the pics and vids coming. The boat is looking good

[ntjetboater]

Good stuff Clark.
That reminds me I am sending some DVDs down with the Candian crew that is going to race in the Worlds in October. Do I need to burn in a different format or will our DVD's work over there?

[Xerophobic]

I never thought to post this or mention it but perhaps I should for the extremely curious.
I have discovered Google Earth online and have found it to be an awesome program especially for scoping out rivers. (thanks Mark Nye!) Im lucky enough that many of the rivers I have run are near enough to heavy population that the site even has the highest resolution pics. Its amazing what you can see from space.
If you don't have it (and have a high speed connection) download the free version, you won't be dissapointed!

The Nottawsagsa is well detailed but unfortunatly the part in the Wasaga beach area is not. If you go the the site you'll see what I mean. I can show you a few highlights of the trip if you wanna run the "cyber" river! lol

Start point-provincial park right on the beach, very nice location:

44 31' 53.09" N 80 00' 41.00" W

The "Sand Bowl"- a very weird formation that felt like the river was running at the bottom of a big cone of sand, it had to have been 100 feet high, I knew you would be able to see this even in the low res pic:

44 28' 50.09" N 80 02' 36.51" W

Trailer park (with launch ramp ) :

44 28' 44.86" N 80 00' 05.32" W

Conservation area-where our direct "jetskier information" ended:

44 27' 09.42" N 79 54' 0279" W

First tree block-thought we were totally done till we got up close and noticed others had chainsawed a path thru, it ws tight tho, had to ask 2 guys fishing to stand back from shore so we didn't roost them, they thought it was waaay cool lol:

44 26' 00.83" N 79. 54' 10.18" W

Where it came to an end- we were actually lucky we'd dropped off plane to get thru a really messed up section just before here cause this would have been one scary thing to come around a corner too! the river was just totally blocked with sizable lumber, pics coming!:

44 25' 10.53" N 79 53' 0405 W


Just for kicks my house is at:

43 46' 25.20" N 79 52' 40.61 W


You can clearly see my buddies bus thats parked next door, only cause it has a Canada flag painted on the whole roof peeking out of the tree's LOL I think thats my black Blazer in the driveway> regretfully they do not have any way of telling you what day the pic is taken


Im just thinking to myself now to attack the river from the area below the major logjam and run to it from the south. I belive this would be an absolutly gorgeous run to make in a month or so when the colours change with the river running thru the tree canopy for quite a ways. I WILL have video for that! I have no clue how to get the boat into the river anywhere south of where we were but I will have to do a little exploring by car to find a place. The river looks like a blast to the south and perhaps a little more open with not so much deadwood.

A military helicopter from the nearby base flew over at one point, they must have been freaking out too lol

Cheers


p.s. oh one more tip if no one else has ever thought of this: ever since we put my wooden black boat on the bottom and my buddy's cell phone bit the dust we've always tried to carry a 'dry box' . We've found the absolute perfect one and its free if your lucky Its sitting on the bow of the boat in the pic earlier in the post. Its a little olive barrel that they sell bulk olives in. It has a great little screw on lid and even a little rubber gasket. I found a local deli that saves them for me and now have 4 in the boat. One for small tools, one for spare coil/wires etc and one for each front passenger for wallets, keys etc. We've started callin them monkey barrels for some reason but they are great for keepin stuff dry and I "hope" may float if you don't weigh em down too much. I also hope I never have to test that theory! I'll try to get a better pic of them

[Clark]