The Mariah Owners Club - Boating last year

Dont know if I mentioned it or not, but a buddy of mine and me took our Z302 from the upper Willamette River in Oregon City (just below the falls) all the way to the mouth of the Columbia River (110 miles) to go salmon fishing (not in our boat) with a friend.

We left on Thursday morning around 8am and it took just a smidge over 3 hours to make the trip. We traveled on an out going tide in windless conditions. Couldnt have asked for more.

Our return home on Sunday evening, wasnt so easy. We left Ilwaco (closest port to the Pacific Ocean on the Columbia) about 2 hours after swing high tide (the current is now running out pretty hard at this point 6-8 mph) with head winds of 10-15 mph and were going in the wrong direction (East) against it all.

What took just over a 1/4 tank of fuel to get there, now has taken 1/2 tank just to get 20 miles up the river with 90 miles left to go. We did fill up half way home.

About 2 hours of the trip was made in the dark, using nothing but the Lowrance and our iphone/ipad with the Navionics $9.99 program topo GPS program.

What an adventure for sure.

Here is a lil clip of us just 10 + miles into our return trip home. It may not look like it but were cruising 25-30 mph and those are 3-4 waves. At about the 40 second mark you can see were spashing down pretty hard. Later (which didnt get on film, as he needed to hang on with both hands at that point) we took a couple completely over the bow and Im sure all but a few inches of the boat was out of the water prior to splash down.

The music is not dub'd in either. We were rocking Aussie style. Figure if your gonna go down, might was well with your hair on fire and the music cranked up.

Oh BTW........thats me, the fat dude in the white shirt, driving miss daisy.

Enjoy

Boating in Astoria - YouTube