Boating Mishap!!!

[TayTay]

Sooo...... I don't know if anybody read my post about going out on Saturday and having a little mishap, well here's the illustrated story.

A friend was trying to get up on the wakeboard, well she is not very good and couldn't stay up. Needless to say her last fall the rope whip lashed her in the knee. I turned around and went to pick her up. When I got there, the angle I took put me kind of close to the shore so I told, once you are on the back of the boat, I'm gonna idle away from the shore a little bit. Well, I was back up and I heard someone say uh stop, then an immediate thud thud thud. I thought somehow the wakeboard went under the boat so I threw it in drive to try get away from it, hearing more thud thud thud I stopped and killed the engine. When I turned around they said I had run over the rope...and handle come to find out.

Well the water is 48 degrees right now. Luckily this time if year I wakeboard in my 7.5mm diving wetsuit with a hood for lack of anything else. I donned my wetsuit and wet diving with a rope around my waist in case I there was an issue, they could pull me out. It was that cold you cant hold your breath for very long so it probably took me 15 trips under the boat to finally get the thing untangle. By then I literally couldn't feel my feet and my hands were getting pretty stiff.

Soooo, we checked the boat when we pulled out and there was a little rubber from the handle wedged in the prop shaft and the strut. Today I noticed the real damage. Apparently those handles are made of aluminum or something and it really dinged the bottom of my boat up. It looks like what happened is the prop hit the middle of the handle, as you can tell by the gouge, then spun it around hitting the bottom of the boat, hence the thud thud thud I heard. Here are some pictures....

The Handle Set Up



The Rope



The gouge in the Handle



The part that I think F-ed my boat up

[TayTay]

The rubber from the handle in the shaft and strut





The fiberglass

[TayTay]

[TayTay]

Ok guys, I need your help. Is this a DIY fix that I can pick up a kit for or am I going to have to pay 100's if not 1000's of dollars to have shop fix this one??

Any input would great! Just want to know how bad I did myself in

[dusty2221]

Holy crap!!

[cmtaylor777]

Damn dude!!! You dinged it good!!!

Good luck. Wish I had some info to help. Just wanted to say daaaaaaaamn!

[saltare inverts]

I think you can repair it. Youll want to do your homework and take your time. Youll have to fix the fiberglass and regel the finish but you can do it. I would do mine if it was me.

[suprava10]

Damn that sucks! Glad it wasn't too bad...

On the repair side, I would get the plastic out from the strut bearing and inspect it. Try to move the prop side to side and up and down...if it moves quite a bit then you would need a new strut bearing. Also, some of them are made of brass and some are made of a plastic material. I would assume that the plastic material would be easier to muck up.

On the fiberglass, you dinged it down to the cloth. For a nice look you probably want a good fiberglass guy to do the job. It shouldn't take them long. Have them use Epoxy resin, maybe some cloth depending on the depth, and regel it. I would say that you have a few hundred dollars of fiberglass work but not horrible.

Good luck with your repairs bro! No big deal, just a small mishap in the grand scheme of things...

[TayTay]

Thanks for the input guys. I might take it to the shop and see what they have to day. I am big into doing projects so I might tackle it myself, we will see what the shop says. At this point, I don't really need it to look nice, I just want to keep the integrity of the boat. I'll keep ya posted on what happens from here. Any more input would be great.

[michael hunter]

Looks like an insurance claim to me. Have the hull professionally repaired and the drive gear checked and realigned. This is why we pay for insurance.