Had an on water failure last night

[Okie Boarder]

So, thought I'd share this one...

Out with a couple of the guys last night...we were getting close to dark. One of the guys was riding and fell. As usual, I pulled the shifter to neutral and heard a somewhat loud "click". I let the boat settle, put it back in gear and idled towards him. At one point I was trying to give it a little more throttle to accelerate and realized it wasn't. So I opened the engine hatch, put it in gear and we gave it some throttle on the side of the carb, manually and it accelerated no problem. I pulled the seat and a couple panels to get to the back of the shifter and found the end piece (linkage?) pin sheared. So, with me propped up on my knees, hand behind the panel we worked our way back to the dock controlling the throttle by hand. Fun stuff...LOL! I was able to pick up the new part this afternoon and should have it put in this weekend.

Limping back to shore 2.JPG

Limping back to shore 1.JPG

[Blackntan90]

Okie, love the first pic! And the inginuity(sp?)! Aglad you where able to get back O.K. Another one of those great stories...remember the time...I am hunkered down waiting out the hurricane, it will probably flood the Potomac river where we go. At least you got out!

[ORIF]

Great thinking!

We had a near disaster Memorial Day, our first day on the lake. After gassing up at the marina with my 15 yo son on board, we were heading home and I noticed that the boat would not plane out. We were out in the middle and I flipped open the back lockers to find 2 feet of water! I opened the hatch and the engine was partially submerged so that I couldn't see where the water was coming in from. The nearest shore was covered with rocks and we were moving so slowly that I wasn't sure we could make it anyways. I told my son that the boat was going to sink and to put on his life preserver.

He yelled to me to call our friends who have a summer home on the lake nearby and to try get it to their boat lift. God was with us and they unbelievably happened to be at their dock. They hurriedly pulled their boat out and we got ours in to save it from sinking. Incredibly quick thinking on his part..takes after his mother. Nearly an hour of bilge pumping and found the cause to be the impeller plate screws had come loose so that the water pump was pumping water into the boat rather than the engine.. Another 30 minutes searching for them under the engine and we were back on the water.

Of course the story doesn't end there... I checked again out on the lake and we were still taking on some water. Found a dime size hole in the exhaust manifold. Fixed that with an inner tube and ratcheting tiedown...I was determined we were going to go wakeboarding that day as we had another family that we had invited to join us.

Two hours later, when we hit the submerged branch fouling the propeller, I waved the white flag of surrender.

I often think that if the events had happened in reverse order, I would have tried to make it to the deepest part of the lake, unhooked the lines from the ballast bags, turned on the pumps......

[Okie Boarder]

How did you fair from the storm blackntan?

ORIF...that's quite a story.

[Blackntan90]

Okie,The 'hurricane' was just 24 hours of light rain and moderate breeze for me.Car had a few leaves plastered to it! The river level looks good for the weekend!

[Okie Boarder]

Good to hear.