Strangest things you've seen while boating..

[philwsailz]

I love reading this thread....

Throwing my vote in for sitting at the ramps watching... My dock is near a ramp and it is fun to stroll down there sometimes....

Just last weekend I was waiting to launch, getting impatient, watching some tool block the ramp while he put gas in, in stalled the plug, etc... I was about to yell at him when he lost his footing and slipped on the green stuff off on the edge of the ramp... He went down, and came up covered with it...

hee hee hee...

[jwanck11]

are you gonna comple clean and tell everyone its you dog?

[philwsailz]

Oh, the other recent fun one...

We were out on our boat, unaware anything was wrong, when it became obvious that the boat was taking on a LOT of water. We loaded the bow with passengers to try to get weight distributed and get on plane, and made it very quickly back to drop off guests in a safe spot and then very quickly headed to the ramp to try to get the boat on the trailer. When I got to the ramp, is was partially blocked by the game-rangers who had just taken their boat out of the water. Sometimes even those guys goof up...

Anyway, the GF, not knowing either why the boat awas trying to sink was in a BIG hurry to get the trailer in the water. She is a bad-a$$ trailer driver, but she seemed a little rattled, and having the game-ranger guys blocking things was confounding it. She flies the truck and trailer in to make the turn to back the trailer, and I swear, about hit one of the dudes. One quick "scuse me" and she was off backing; She was all totally "I got things to do" attitude.

I see one of the dudes turn, maybe a little miffed and all like WTF? Then he sees me, and understands. It was totally cool...

[philwsailz]

are you gonna comple clean and tell everyone its you dog?

nope. That has not happend to me in......

well, since May...

[jwanck11]

why was the boat sinking???

[philwsailz]

why was the boat sinking???

It turns out to be so simple....

There is a quick-release fitting at the bottom of the straboard exhaust manifold that came loose, or was never properly re-installed the last time it was disconnected.

Later that week, after taking water we put the boat on the muffs, (it is a stern-drive) and fired it up. 'Soon as the thermostat opened it was obvious. Fished around briefly and snapped it back in place and all was good.

No water got in the motor or electronics.... Life is good.

[philwsailz]

I could have turned off the motor to try to find the leak, but was concerned about it restarting. Hindsight is 20/20 and as it turns out, the leak really would have stopped if I had just killed the motor, but there was just no knowing...

[dogbert]

I could have turned off the motor to try to find the leak, but was concerned about it restarting. Hindsight is 20/20 and as it turns out, the leak really would have stopped if I had just killed the motor, but there was just no knowing...

Yeah, when your boat is sinking, you don't have time to mess around.

I had something similar happened when one of my plastic freeze plugs broke while driving. It was in the engine block, too!

Fortunately, the hole's not very big, but I did get back to my lift in record time.