dannyual767
Petty Officer 1st Class
- Joined
- May 15, 2010
- Messages
- 273
Okay, I'm just a little frustrated and angry and want to vent about yesterday. I was looking forward to it for a month. In addition we had family and friends come into town for the Memorial Day weekend.
I've got a 2004 Stingray 200LX and two Yamaha Waverunners ('94 Waveraider & '97 GP1200.) I had spent Friday night reinstalling an exhaust pipe on the Raider that I had to have welded up. I finished at 11pm.
Yesterday morning, I wake up at 6:45am and am replacing a broken latch on the boat. No problem. At about 9am, I start the Raider that I'd fixed the night before. With the garden hose going, water is shooting out of the exhaust pipe connections
. My brother-in-law helps me take it apart and we can see that I had folded over the exhaust pipe connection gasket the night before. It was dark and I was using lights and couldn't really see what I was doing.
Sooooooo, the morning pretty much starts off with an additional hour of mechanical work and we are 45 mins late meeting our friends at the boat ramp. Get both PWCs and the boat in the water and head to our favorite beach. Tide is ripping and we can't get our Danforth anchor to hold. A guy already parked there in his big center console boat is watching us real closely to make sure us "incompetent looking" boaters don't bash into his boat. We try about 3 times before we get the anchor to set.
By that time, we had swung out so far into the open water and trying to motor my boat in reverse was worthless. It has real poor low speed handling characteristics. My brother-in-law comes out to us on the GP1200 and grabs a rope to pull us closer to the beach. The current is so strong that he's struggling and the man on the beach is confirming what idiots we are.
Finally get the stern of the boat close to the shore and set our beach anchor. Whew, that's done but I'm not happy because I feel like a newbie. An hour later, the Waveraider dies out on the water and we have to tow her in. Upon inspection, I had forgotten to tighten one of the exhaust hose clamps during my hasty repair work earlier in the morning. Thankfully I had tools and I was able to fix it on the beach but it didn't go willingly. It wasn't a simple matter of tightening the clamp. The hose had come off and it was a bear to get back on! 30 mins of nasty, greasy work on the beach.
Now, all is well, right? Not! We're out for a boat ride and the Waverunners are with us. Then, after about an hour, we head back. As we're heading back, the waves and swells are huge! The wind has really picked up and is super strong. We can't see our Easy Up tent on the beach. As we get closer we see that the tent has blown over. We connect back to our anchor rope but the Danforth won't hold so we decide to call it a day.
Since we're not anchored, one of our party is trying to keep the boat from beaching while the others are gathering everything up. The $100 Easy Up tent is destroyed. I almost poked a hole in the vinyl boat upholstery putting the mangled remains back in the boat . We finally get the boat loaded and all vehicles motor away from the beach. Then the GP1200 mysteriously dies 100yds out . We ended up towing it back to the dock and by the grace of God himself, the retrieval of all craft went fine and so did the rest of the evening.
We were planning to go out again today after church but my wife decided that I'd had enough misery and called off the day of boating. She's right. I couldn't take another day like yesterday. I had 10% fun and 90% misery. In the end, no one was hurt and the others in my boating party had a great time so I'm happy for that.
I'm sorry for the rant and hope that your day on the water goes much, much better than mine did yesterday.
I've got a 2004 Stingray 200LX and two Yamaha Waverunners ('94 Waveraider & '97 GP1200.) I had spent Friday night reinstalling an exhaust pipe on the Raider that I had to have welded up. I finished at 11pm.
Yesterday morning, I wake up at 6:45am and am replacing a broken latch on the boat. No problem. At about 9am, I start the Raider that I'd fixed the night before. With the garden hose going, water is shooting out of the exhaust pipe connections
. My brother-in-law helps me take it apart and we can see that I had folded over the exhaust pipe connection gasket the night before. It was dark and I was using lights and couldn't really see what I was doing.Sooooooo, the morning pretty much starts off with an additional hour of mechanical work and we are 45 mins late meeting our friends at the boat ramp. Get both PWCs and the boat in the water and head to our favorite beach. Tide is ripping and we can't get our Danforth anchor to hold. A guy already parked there in his big center console boat is watching us real closely to make sure us "incompetent looking" boaters don't bash into his boat. We try about 3 times before we get the anchor to set.
By that time, we had swung out so far into the open water and trying to motor my boat in reverse was worthless. It has real poor low speed handling characteristics. My brother-in-law comes out to us on the GP1200 and grabs a rope to pull us closer to the beach. The current is so strong that he's struggling and the man on the beach is confirming what idiots we are.
Finally get the stern of the boat close to the shore and set our beach anchor. Whew, that's done but I'm not happy because I feel like a newbie. An hour later, the Waveraider dies out on the water and we have to tow her in. Upon inspection, I had forgotten to tighten one of the exhaust hose clamps during my hasty repair work earlier in the morning. Thankfully I had tools and I was able to fix it on the beach but it didn't go willingly. It wasn't a simple matter of tightening the clamp. The hose had come off and it was a bear to get back on! 30 mins of nasty, greasy work on the beach
.Now, all is well, right? Not! We're out for a boat ride and the Waverunners are with us. Then, after about an hour, we head back. As we're heading back, the waves and swells are huge! The wind has really picked up and is super strong. We can't see our Easy Up tent on the beach. As we get closer we see that the tent has blown over. We connect back to our anchor rope but the Danforth won't hold so we decide to call it a day.
Since we're not anchored, one of our party is trying to keep the boat from beaching while the others are gathering everything up. The $100 Easy Up tent is destroyed. I almost poked a hole in the vinyl boat upholstery putting the mangled remains back in the boat
. We finally get the boat loaded and all vehicles motor away from the beach. Then the GP1200 mysteriously dies 100yds out . We ended up towing it back to the dock and by the grace of God himself, the retrieval of all craft went fine and so did the rest of the evening.We were planning to go out again today after church but my wife decided that I'd had enough misery and called off the day of boating. She's right. I couldn't take another day like yesterday. I had 10% fun and 90% misery. In the end, no one was hurt and the others in my boating party had a great time so I'm happy for that.
I'm sorry for the rant and hope that your day on the water goes much, much better than mine did yesterday.
