A25's La Dolce Vita & Shatoosh meet up at Lake Pleasant

[DesertAlbin736]

Continued from the the A25/A27 page...

For folks familiar with Hira Reid's blog "Adventures of Shatoosh and Pashmina" here,

http://shatooshandpashmina.blogspot.com/

the latest news is that Shatoosh has a new owner who resides in Green Valley, Arizona, a small rural burg south of Tucson. Well, tomorrow said new owner Joyce is bringing Shatoosh up to our home waters of Lake Pleasant north of Phoenix to join up with us & do a little "shakedown" cruise before she takes it up to the Pacific Northwest for the summer in a couple weeks. We were supposed to go out today, but yesterday was the windiest of the season to date, so much blowing dust on I-10 between Phoenix and Tucson that visibility went down to zero and the road was closed for for several hours. Flagstaff up in northern Arizona clocked a maximum gust of 76 mph yesterday. If it were a tropical storm it would qualify as a cat 1 hurricane, but this was just bone dry wind. Sky Harbor airport in Phoenix recorded a max gust over 40 mph yesterday. Today is not quite as bad, but still expecting 20 knot gusts on the lake this afternoon and gusts as high as 35 knots overnight tonight, so by mutual agreement decided to wait until tomorrow until the front finally blows itself out and milder conditions return with the temps topping out at 79 Saturday & 86 on Sunday. It was a nice winter while it lasted, but we're just weeks away from full on 100+ degree summer.

Update, April 16th:

Shatoosh's new owner Joyce did make it up to Lake Pleasant from Green Valley in southern Arizona on Saturday, April 14 (Titanic day). Anticipating an easy "shakedown" cruise on the lake we launched both boats at the crowded boat ramp, which in itself was and adventure dealing with the lines & heavy weekend crowds. After getting both boats in the water Joyce fired up the Volvo engine on her boat, only to find that the raw water pump wasn't pumping, and soon the high temp alarm sounded. We checked the through hull valve was open, the raw water strainer was clear & getting water through, and we even loosened the inlet hose at the pump & found that water was getting to the pump. The pump is gear driven off the injector pump, so a loose or broken fan belt wasn't the issue. She looked to see if previous owners had left any impeller spares on the boat, but if there were any she couldn't find them, so we put Shatoosh back on the trailer and parked it for the day. My wife & I then took Joyce for a spin around the lake on our boat & she treated us to lunch at the restaurant at one of the lake's two marinas. We had a nice visit, got acquainted, and brought her back to drop her off at the ramp & she drove on back to her home in Green Valley. Hopefully she'll be able to get the problem corrected & fix the pump before she takes the boat up to Vancouver Island in BC for the summer later this month.

We got so busy with everything we forgot to take any pictures.