It's taken most of the winter to get the Admiral's center-consol, Nana's N'Ocean ready for the summer, and with her son's family visiting from Arizona over the July 4th weekend there was a final crash program to get it in the water, one way or the other.

After a mad scramble to transfer over the usual USCG safety equipment and floatation devices, not to mention installing the new cooler-seat as well as fishing poles, bait -- and some cold drinks since it happened to be those July days hovering around 100 degrees -- Nana's N'Ocean plunked in the water with little additional fanfare. We didn't go far and lacking a fishfinder as of yet, we simply chose a spot where we wouldn't tangle the numerous crab pots, and with modest expectations, threw out the anchor.

In surprisingly little time, fish (albeit rather small ones) began jumping on the bottom rigs at a surprisingly steady pace and inside of 40-45 minutes everyone aboard had caught at least something with an occasional double hook-up just for extra grins. We fished for an hour or so, finally keeping a couple of the more eating-sized croakers and headed home, quite satisfied with the venture.

There are still all sorts of interesting stuff to do. GPS and fishfinder for starters, as well as some other odds and ends to spruce things up a bit, not to mention fixing the idle on the motor. Right now, pulling the throttle back anywhere near idle simply kills the motor - as one can imagine, this makes docking an interesting proposition; essentially requiring a precision aimed approach at mach 3, kill the engine and hoping that Nana's N'Ocean coasts to a stop in exactly the right place. So far so good; however, now that we've got a little extra time before the next grandkids appear, Nana's N'Ocean is going back to the shop for a little carburetor tweaking to help cut back on the superfluous excitement factor.