www.iFourWinns.com

Possibly...I only saw them because they were dropping the water level at Mohave and I could see them on the rocks....

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2002 Funship 214
VP 5.7 GX Si
2003 Tahoe

Zebra mussels making news at Texoma again. This video was from this week.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_8sxUqFUGM

Here is the one from this time last year.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tC8Pnvxm30

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2001 328 Vista

Previous Boats:
2004 Sea Ray 220 Select

The only thing we have here this time of year is polar mussels.

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Mike
2005 Four Winns 230/240
VP 5.7GXi/DP
1998 F-150 XLT
Boat Pic

For those of you that leave your boats in the water...the main issue is if they grow up in the folds of the bellows (do they have hard shells like barnacles?) it can cut the bellows or even trim lines (I had the latter happen with barnacles on a trim line)....the other thing is that if they grow in the water intakes they can eventually cause an overheat because they can actually partially block the water intakes on the drive...I have had to pull off the drive (which I do every fall anyway) remove the impeller (in the upper drive on a Cobra) and take a very small pic and break up the small barnacles in there...and then put the muffs on the drive and flush em out through the open inpeller housing...works well and otherwise you'd have to split the drive to get em out...
I'd say that if it's like what we have painting the drive with antifouling paint as much as you might hate doing it is probably the only thing you can do....except for pulling the boat out once a month and pressure washing them off...it's a constant battle here in salt water...and is making me REALLY seriously consider outboard power for my next one....which means no more FWs but instead a more fishing oriented boat....

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88 Four Winns 200 Horizon
4.3 OMC Cobra-4bbl
2002 Walker Bay 10/2012 Suzuki 2.5
2008 Walker Bay 8

1998 Jeep Grand Cherokee 4.0/Selectrac
2007 Jeep Grand Cherokee 5.7 Hemi/Quadradrive II

We have them in the St-Lawrence. In my meck of the woods they seem to leave boats alone for now. So far I've only seen a dozen small ones, maybe 1/16th accross on the anodes of my fishing boat's outboard merc after may be 5 months in the water, and none on any painted or gel coat surface . They seem to like a constant flow of water, which is why they tend to plug municipal water inlets. The marina were I keep my boat is well sheltered and has very little natural current so it may be diffrerent in other spots. We'll see this year if the prefer outdrives

The round goby, another invasive specie, do eat a lot of zebra mussels, but apparently not enough to control the spread on their own. The gobies have also become a pest, but at least judging by the fact that lures imitating gobies have become popular with walleye and bass fishermen, they seem to have some natural predators.

On the good side the mussels have made the water noticeable clearer which makes swimming more pleasurable and boating a bit safer as it became easier to spot shoals and navigating unmarked channels such as these: http://www.bing.com/maps/?v=2&cp=rjwr258vbkg0&scene=28397193&lvl=1&sty=b much easier.

I had the zebras for the first time this year that affected my trim tabs and my speedometer. The trim tabs were so caked with them that I could not operate them effectively and they caked up around my speedometer wheel at the stern to where they stopped the spinning entirely. I couldn't figure out what was happening with the boat near the end of the season until I got it home and started to clean it. I'm on Lake St. Claire and moving to another marina with a lagoon.

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Alexj



1995 Four Winns Horizon 190
OMC 5.0 RL