Three Svens

For any of you that have ever fished with the Svens, you know that it can be a bit of an adventure. There never fails to be a problem that could get our dauber down if not dealt with immediately.

You’re in the middle of the lake and the outboard suddenly dies. What’s the cause? Well, some might call for BAA (Boaters Association of America) but the Svens just pull the cover off and go in.

Last year on our spring trip Sven Richard’s outboard did just that – died in the middle of the lake. Sven Ben and Sven MarkC were worried about the long paddle back to the cabin. So we pulled the top off of the outboard and did a little diagnostic.

Gas, Spark; these things aren’t really complicated at the root of it. If you have gas and spark, you can almost always make ‘em go. We checked for gas – choke it and pull a few times, if it stinks like gas, you’ve got gas. It stunk, we had gas.

Now for spark. If you happen to be mechanically gifted and a former Boy Scout, you will no doubt have a socket set along, so you can just pull the spark plugs and see if there is a spark. If you happen to be in a downpour when your motor dies, then you need to make other arrangements.

Fortunately for us the problem was obvious – well it was obvious to me. One of the ignition wires was black. This generally is not a good thing. In our case the wire had rubbed on something for long enough to cut the insulation and shorted, causing a nice arc that melted the wire. Fortunately for the Svens, there was some slack in the wires and we had a needle nose pliers. Now we just needed something to splice the wires together.

As Pooh says, “ Think think…think think think” Ah- I’ve got split shots in my panfish box. We’ll strip the wire back to good wire and overlap them. Apply the jaws of a splitshot over the two wires and use the needle nose to crimp it all together.

There were incredulous looks from the front of the boat. But it started on the first pull. The incredulous looks morphed into joy – Let’s go fish!

Sven MC caught a nice walleye that afternoon – all owed to a little splitshot – and some Sven ingenuity.