ratdude747
Chief Petty Officer
- Joined
- Sep 30, 2023
- Messages
- 483
Can't say I can top any of these.... but here's the worst things I've had in my 2.5 years of boating:
-Hit the Ohio River with my wife, my best friend, and his buddy (Duffy's Landing, Indiana). Water is way rougher than expected and any time we go above idle it doesn't go well. Finally find some clear water... and I let it rip a bit. In the thrill, I miss a white cap and nail it head on, to the point of seeing stars. I wasn't able to drive for about 30 minutes or so, thankfully the others could.
-Hit a lake known to have a bad spot (Lake Waveland, IN) with my Wife, best friend, and immediate inlaws. Fight shifting trouble all day, but at the end, we accidentally hit the bad spot HARD. Knocked 2 of my 4 blades off the prop; it's plastic Piranha, so that's expected, but it busted the blade bases too to the point of allowing exhaust to foul the two blades that survived.
-The same thing happened but (maybe) not quite as impressively on the other side of the same lake this year... discovered a new bad spot! My best friend (who was tubing for the first time in 20 years) got to see it. Too bad he didn't have a Go-Pro on... he said it was a big splash.
While it wasn't leaking exhaust, it was way more imbalanced. And since this was a lot further from the ramp, it was quite the long shaky idle of shame back to said ramp. Thankfully I had a sect of blades in a different pitch I was going to try, so the day was salvaged over lunch.
-One other idle of shame: I bought a used aluminum mercruiser prop on eBay to try. Ran it on a lake with a long no-wake zone from the ramp to open water (Monroe Lake). Found out it was spun... thankfully, I had the 4-blade Piranha I normally ran in the back of my truck, so we were able to swap and re-dip. Still quite embarrasing!
-Almost not worth mentioning, but while boating the Ohio river (Madison, Indiana), I had a cheap crappy corrugated bilge hose split wide open, which combined with an automatic bilge pump, turned my bilge into a swirling jacuzzi. Saw the bilge light turn on in the helm and stay on...
... thankfully, it was just that and not a plug/hull failure. Scared the 
out of me. (I fixed it later with some new non-corrugated hose of higher quality)
Now for the more "I wasn't sure I was going to get out of it" incidents:
-On the first outing with the boat under my ownership (Racoon Lake, IN), my best friend's buddy decided to go for a swim and didn't wear a PFD. That was the day that we discovered how short and (for "large" people like him and I) inadequate the swim ladder on the boat is. He got exhausted... we tossed him a PFD to cling to (I do keep an actual throwable one on but he wanted a wearable one) and eventually he made his way to shallow enough water that he could stand for a bit and us muscle him back on the boat. Without (by some miracle) beaching the boat. From then on, no swimming without PFDs and I invested in a rope ladder to hang from the existing ladder to give a few more steps.
-On the last outing of last year (Ohio River, Duffy's Landing, Indiana), my wife for some unexplanable reason couldn't get the boat on the trailer. And then stalled the boat and couldn't figure out the neutral lockout knob on the throttle needed sometimes to be able to crank. I had to do some creative things with the trailer winch and a mooring rope to pull the boat parallel to the trailer so we could switch places (too far out to directly snare the bow eye, and she was too flustered to be able to move the mooring rope to said eye). After all of that and nearly beaching myself in reverse, I was able to get the boat on the trailer, although I did wind a bunch of fishing line in the prop (has happened there multiple times since they let people fish off the courtesy dock) and sheared the trim anode clean off:
Somehow, we didn't mess up the hull pulling that close to the ramp... this isn't a beach loadable boat normally!
-Didn't happen to me, but on the last outing before this boat sat for 12 years (Lake Waveland; the previous owners are/were my best friend's aunt and late uncle), the ignition failed and they had to be towed to the ramp by a pontoon (tow of shame). I later found this issue to at least partially be a bad coil, although I also upgraded to Pertronix (didn't try to run the original points knowing what the issue was and that they had 0 luck getting it to run after that).
-Hit the Ohio River with my wife, my best friend, and his buddy (Duffy's Landing, Indiana). Water is way rougher than expected and any time we go above idle it doesn't go well. Finally find some clear water... and I let it rip a bit. In the thrill, I miss a white cap and nail it head on, to the point of seeing stars. I wasn't able to drive for about 30 minutes or so, thankfully the others could.
-Hit a lake known to have a bad spot (Lake Waveland, IN) with my Wife, best friend, and immediate inlaws. Fight shifting trouble all day, but at the end, we accidentally hit the bad spot HARD. Knocked 2 of my 4 blades off the prop; it's plastic Piranha, so that's expected, but it busted the blade bases too to the point of allowing exhaust to foul the two blades that survived.
-The same thing happened but (maybe) not quite as impressively on the other side of the same lake this year... discovered a new bad spot! My best friend (who was tubing for the first time in 20 years) got to see it. Too bad he didn't have a Go-Pro on... he said it was a big splash.
While it wasn't leaking exhaust, it was way more imbalanced. And since this was a lot further from the ramp, it was quite the long shaky idle of shame back to said ramp. Thankfully I had a sect of blades in a different pitch I was going to try, so the day was salvaged over lunch.
-One other idle of shame: I bought a used aluminum mercruiser prop on eBay to try. Ran it on a lake with a long no-wake zone from the ramp to open water (Monroe Lake). Found out it was spun... thankfully, I had the 4-blade Piranha I normally ran in the back of my truck, so we were able to swap and re-dip. Still quite embarrasing!
-Almost not worth mentioning, but while boating the Ohio river (Madison, Indiana), I had a cheap crappy corrugated bilge hose split wide open, which combined with an automatic bilge pump, turned my bilge into a swirling jacuzzi. Saw the bilge light turn on in the helm and stay on...
... thankfully, it was just that and not a plug/hull failure. Scared the out of me. (I fixed it later with some new non-corrugated hose of higher quality)Now for the more "I wasn't sure I was going to get out of it" incidents:
-On the first outing with the boat under my ownership (Racoon Lake, IN), my best friend's buddy decided to go for a swim and didn't wear a PFD. That was the day that we discovered how short and (for "large" people like him and I) inadequate the swim ladder on the boat is. He got exhausted... we tossed him a PFD to cling to (I do keep an actual throwable one on but he wanted a wearable one) and eventually he made his way to shallow enough water that he could stand for a bit and us muscle him back on the boat. Without (by some miracle) beaching the boat. From then on, no swimming without PFDs and I invested in a rope ladder to hang from the existing ladder to give a few more steps.
-On the last outing of last year (Ohio River, Duffy's Landing, Indiana), my wife for some unexplanable reason couldn't get the boat on the trailer. And then stalled the boat and couldn't figure out the neutral lockout knob on the throttle needed sometimes to be able to crank. I had to do some creative things with the trailer winch and a mooring rope to pull the boat parallel to the trailer so we could switch places (too far out to directly snare the bow eye, and she was too flustered to be able to move the mooring rope to said eye). After all of that and nearly beaching myself in reverse, I was able to get the boat on the trailer, although I did wind a bunch of fishing line in the prop (has happened there multiple times since they let people fish off the courtesy dock
) and sheared the trim anode clean off:Somehow, we didn't mess up the hull pulling that close to the ramp... this isn't a beach loadable boat normally!
-Didn't happen to me, but on the last outing before this boat sat for 12 years (Lake Waveland; the previous owners are/were my best friend's aunt and late uncle), the ignition failed and they had to be towed to the ramp by a pontoon (tow of shame). I later found this issue to at least partially be a bad coil, although I also upgraded to Pertronix (didn't try to run the original points knowing what the issue was and that they had 0 luck getting it to run after that).
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