Re: Sunk Boat
I have been involved in raising three boats over the years, one was a smaller runabout, with an outboard, which sunk in shallow water, bow still afloat. What we did was put two large tractor tubes around the outboard's lower unit, and stuffed two more into two rear compartments then inflated them with a portable compressor. The boat floated, of the bottom well enough to bring it closer to shore, we then pumped out the water enough to tow it back to the ramp. On that run, someone rode in the boat and reached back and pulled the drain plug while underway, at this point, I kicked up the speed a bit. This drained out 90% of the water remaining. While underway, the guy in the boat also did a makeshift repair on the broken livewell fill tube which is what caused it to sink.
The second one we did was a sunken cuddy cabin, in a river, about 5' down, completely submerged. It was an older boat with no flotation. We took advantage of the fact that it had a cabin to raise the boat. We were able to stuff several large tubes and inflatables into the cabin and fill them from the surface. Only one guy had to get wet, the guy who had to keep swapping over the compressor hose to various tubes. The boat started to rise as soon as the second large inner tube was inflated, when we filled the third one, the boat was at the surface, and was boardable. We tried to pump it out but the leaks were too severe. It was an I/O boat that had had lost its exhaust bellows. We again, towed the boat, pulled the plug, and kept it moving all the way back to the ramp where we all but beached it while we slowly winched it out letting it drain.
The third one was a smaller aluminum runabout, which was half sunk and pretty waterlogged, it was an abandoned boat left for years far from any ramp. We tore out all the soggy wood and interior, bucket bailed it as best we could and towed it afloat with the plug out all the way back to the ramp and a waiting trailer.
