Novice Boaters Post
Posted: January 15th, 2005, 1:53 am
Learning From The Boating Mistakes of Others
Reprinted from Boating Life magazine, courtesy of World Publications
By Brett Becker
"Earlier this summer, on a high desert lake an hour east of Bakersfield, a fellow new to boating was having a problem. No matter how hard he tried, he just couldn't get his brand new 22-foot runabout to perform. It wouldn't get on a plane at all and was very sluggish in almost every maneuver, no matter how much power he supplied. After about an hour of trying to make it go, he putted over to a nearby marina. Maybe they could tell him what was wrong. A thorough topside check revealed that everything was in perfect working order. The engine ran fine. The drive unit trimmed up and down. The prop was the correct diameter and pitch. One of the guys at the marina decided to jump in the water to check underneath. He came up choking on water, he was laughing so hard. Under the boat, still strapped securely in place, was the trailer."
This story came to the Boating Life offices via e-mail, so its validity is questionable. True or not, it raises a good point. If it involves a boat, novices and experts alike can make mistakes. The incident above involved someone who was pretty green. In the account below, someone who should have known better proves once again we all can learn, no matter how experienced we are. For more experienced boaters, label it a refresher course. For newer boaters, call it experience without expense.
Vicarious Lessons
Some people insist that learning from your own mistakes is the best way to master a skill, but it's a lot cheaper to learn from someone else's. According to Les Hall of Sea Tow, an assistance service for stranded boaters, people call for assistance for lots of different reasons, but a few of those reasons are recurrent enough to make the Top 10 list below:
10. Fire on board.
9. Taking on water because boat struck something or has a broken hose.
8. Line tangled in propeller.
7. Boat ran aground.
6. Propeller spun on hub.
5. Operator errors such as engine in gear and won't start, kill switch flipped and so on.
4. Mechanical problems.
3. Overheating engine.
2. Bad fuel or out of fuel.
1. Electrical problems.
As you can see, some are unavoidable, mechanical things being the way they are. But a lot of them need never happen. For example, whose line do you think was tangled in the propellers of all those stranded boats? Odds are that the other end was tied to their own boat. Lesson number one: Be sure you have cleared all lines from the dock and that all lines are secured inside and in no danger of falling out or dangling behind.
Running Aground
Novice or expert, it's common to run aground. Tricky tides and shifting sandbars can make a chart obsolete and cause even an experienced skipper to grind the hull against terra firma. An experienced captain knows how to get out of this situation. However, a novice will often try to drive the boat off the sandbar, which is what happened at a dealer meeting last year in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Upon returning from a test drive on Tampa Bay, the dealer ran wide of the channel and chocked a 23-foot cuddy up on a sandbar. Though he was within shouting distance of lots of people who could have helped, he tried to get off the bar himself. He didn't budge an inch, but he did fill the water-pump impeller housing with sand and silt. That will trash an impeller in a hurry. Because he couldn't hear, feel or see a rubber impeller self-destruct and didn't pay attention to the temperature gauge, the dealer continued to try to free the boat from the sandbar. Starved for cooling water, the brand-new engine overheated, locked up and grenaded itself. Lesson number two: Stay inside marked channels. If it isn't marked, rely on the axiom: "If you don't know, go slow." If you run aground, you can do a number of things. If the tide is out, you could wait for it to rise, and then drive away. If the boat is small enough, try shifting the weight to the back or rocking the boat side to side and briefly trying reverse gear. Never try to move forward when grounded. It usually just makes things worse. Or if it's safe, you and the crew can jump out and push it off. If the boat is too large, call for help.
Heavy beds of seaweed or kelp and jellyfish can also clog your boat's cooling system. Likewise, plastic bags, freshwater hyacinths and other debris can be sucked into the water intake and restrict flow, causing your boat to overheat.
Spun Propeller Hubs
Another avoidable mistake from the list: Propellers that have spun on the hub are also a big reason that people need help. Spun props typically have two causes: age and impact. If your propeller has spun because it's old and brittle, then you may want to pay more attention during routine maintenance checks. Cracked rubber between the hub and blades is a sure sign of trouble, and it could leave you stranded.
The second reason is impact: striking something in the water, such as a log. Propeller designs have evolved to break loose from the hub on impact. No, it's not part of a conspiracy of planned obsolescence; it's actually a good idea. If a propeller were solid, those logs and other floating debris would break something inside the gear case. If you thought repairing a propeller was expensive, you should see the bill for tearing down a lower unit and replacing shattered drive gears. Cha-ching! So, what's a boater to do? It's simple, really: Watch where you're going and carry a spare propeller on board. You never know what could be in your path.
For example, an editor for a national boating magazine - not this one, of course - was test-driving a new Sea Ray bow rider on the Tennessee River, when a floor mat lying on the aft seat to prevent boarding passengers' footprints blew out the back. No big deal. We, er, he turned around and looked for it, but it must have sunk to the bottom. Coming back down the river on another boat, the editor was enjoying the scenery, exchanging stories with Sea Ray folks and checking out the new boat's interior. A sickening thump came from the stern area, followed by intense vibration as the boat slowed. He stuck it in neutral, killed the engine and trimmed the stern-drive up. It emerged from the water, bearing the lost mat, which was chewed up and snarled in the prop and wrapped around the shaft. The mat did no damage, and the group was off and running again as soon as the strands were cut loose. But had he been looking ahead, rather than running his mouth and checking out the interior, that never would have happened.
Operator Error
Lots of cars - and boats - have been towed to the dealership because the engine won't start. The technician first checks to see if the engine has a spark and fuel to the cylinder. If the plugs fire, but there is no fuel, he doesn't check the carburetor or the injectors. He sits at the helm, turns the key and checks the fuel gauge. More likely than not, the thing is out of gas. Well, duh! What sounds so simple and elementary is likely to be overlooked when trouble strikes.
For example, at Yamaha's press introduction of the new LS2000, one of the boat's engines wouldn't start. Well, a boat full of magazine editors - nobody ever said editors were very bright - had just shut it down to pick up a skier. Now only one engine would fire. They lifted the hood and started nosing around to see if maybe a coil wire had come loose or something.
Still, nothing
They could get back to shore on one engine, but it would have been a little embarrassing to leave in a boat with two running engines and come back with anything less. They were about to limp back to shore when someone noticed that the left engine's kill switch had been bumped to the off position. Here was a group of people who spend a lot of time around boats - experts, one could surmise - and they knew enough to look for loose wires, which is simple, but not simple enough. Lesson? Check the really simple stuff first. Imagine if that had been your boat and you had to be towed in because the kill switch was flipped off or the boat was out of gas. The guys at the marina would have laughed at you as hard as the guys who found that poor sap's trailer still strapped to his boat.
Trailer Awareness
It's also important to realize that accidents and foul-ups don't just happen on the water. They are just as frequent even before you stick the boat in the water. Toward that end, let's learn from some of the mistakes we've ... uh, seen others make.
When picking up a photography boat after a day-long shoot, one editor didn't think to remove the bolt-on tower. It was rainy and dark and, thanks to rush-hour traffic, he was running late. When he jumped out of the truck to walk back to the trailer to guide the boat driver, he landed waist-deep in cold lake water. Cold, wet and otherwise miserable, he never thought to unbolt the tower and proceeded to take out the lowest branches of every tree between the lake and the office. Some $600 later, the tower was repaired, but the jokes and torment continue.
In another incident, a guy fastened a cable lock around the trailer wheels to thwart thieves. "If the wheels won't turn, they can't steal the boat," which is true, but he forgot to remove the cable before he set out for the lake. When the cable went taut as he drove away, it snapped the fiberglass fender off the trailer. One hundred dollars for a lesson learned. This the same guy with several chunks missing from his garage door from lower units being backed into it, and the same guilty party who nearly lost a boat because he didn't screw down the trailer's ball latch enough.
And in the end ...
The point is that anyone can make mistakes, and they usually stem from hurrying or not paying attention, which makes all of them avoidable. If you're new to boating, it's easy to make stupid mistakes, and we hope you've learned from ours, er, others'. Experienced boaters are just as susceptible and a refresher course never hurts. Be sure to keep these lessons in mind this boating season.
I wish there was more stuff like this around for us idiots to read. I am going to buy a boat this spring and I constantly worry about killing myself the first time out.
Reprinted from Boating Life magazine, courtesy of World Publications
By Brett Becker
"Earlier this summer, on a high desert lake an hour east of Bakersfield, a fellow new to boating was having a problem. No matter how hard he tried, he just couldn't get his brand new 22-foot runabout to perform. It wouldn't get on a plane at all and was very sluggish in almost every maneuver, no matter how much power he supplied. After about an hour of trying to make it go, he putted over to a nearby marina. Maybe they could tell him what was wrong. A thorough topside check revealed that everything was in perfect working order. The engine ran fine. The drive unit trimmed up and down. The prop was the correct diameter and pitch. One of the guys at the marina decided to jump in the water to check underneath. He came up choking on water, he was laughing so hard. Under the boat, still strapped securely in place, was the trailer."
This story came to the Boating Life offices via e-mail, so its validity is questionable. True or not, it raises a good point. If it involves a boat, novices and experts alike can make mistakes. The incident above involved someone who was pretty green. In the account below, someone who should have known better proves once again we all can learn, no matter how experienced we are. For more experienced boaters, label it a refresher course. For newer boaters, call it experience without expense.
Vicarious Lessons
Some people insist that learning from your own mistakes is the best way to master a skill, but it's a lot cheaper to learn from someone else's. According to Les Hall of Sea Tow, an assistance service for stranded boaters, people call for assistance for lots of different reasons, but a few of those reasons are recurrent enough to make the Top 10 list below:
10. Fire on board.
9. Taking on water because boat struck something or has a broken hose.
8. Line tangled in propeller.
7. Boat ran aground.
6. Propeller spun on hub.
5. Operator errors such as engine in gear and won't start, kill switch flipped and so on.
4. Mechanical problems.
3. Overheating engine.
2. Bad fuel or out of fuel.
1. Electrical problems.
As you can see, some are unavoidable, mechanical things being the way they are. But a lot of them need never happen. For example, whose line do you think was tangled in the propellers of all those stranded boats? Odds are that the other end was tied to their own boat. Lesson number one: Be sure you have cleared all lines from the dock and that all lines are secured inside and in no danger of falling out or dangling behind.
Running Aground
Novice or expert, it's common to run aground. Tricky tides and shifting sandbars can make a chart obsolete and cause even an experienced skipper to grind the hull against terra firma. An experienced captain knows how to get out of this situation. However, a novice will often try to drive the boat off the sandbar, which is what happened at a dealer meeting last year in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Upon returning from a test drive on Tampa Bay, the dealer ran wide of the channel and chocked a 23-foot cuddy up on a sandbar. Though he was within shouting distance of lots of people who could have helped, he tried to get off the bar himself. He didn't budge an inch, but he did fill the water-pump impeller housing with sand and silt. That will trash an impeller in a hurry. Because he couldn't hear, feel or see a rubber impeller self-destruct and didn't pay attention to the temperature gauge, the dealer continued to try to free the boat from the sandbar. Starved for cooling water, the brand-new engine overheated, locked up and grenaded itself. Lesson number two: Stay inside marked channels. If it isn't marked, rely on the axiom: "If you don't know, go slow." If you run aground, you can do a number of things. If the tide is out, you could wait for it to rise, and then drive away. If the boat is small enough, try shifting the weight to the back or rocking the boat side to side and briefly trying reverse gear. Never try to move forward when grounded. It usually just makes things worse. Or if it's safe, you and the crew can jump out and push it off. If the boat is too large, call for help.
Heavy beds of seaweed or kelp and jellyfish can also clog your boat's cooling system. Likewise, plastic bags, freshwater hyacinths and other debris can be sucked into the water intake and restrict flow, causing your boat to overheat.
Spun Propeller Hubs
Another avoidable mistake from the list: Propellers that have spun on the hub are also a big reason that people need help. Spun props typically have two causes: age and impact. If your propeller has spun because it's old and brittle, then you may want to pay more attention during routine maintenance checks. Cracked rubber between the hub and blades is a sure sign of trouble, and it could leave you stranded.
The second reason is impact: striking something in the water, such as a log. Propeller designs have evolved to break loose from the hub on impact. No, it's not part of a conspiracy of planned obsolescence; it's actually a good idea. If a propeller were solid, those logs and other floating debris would break something inside the gear case. If you thought repairing a propeller was expensive, you should see the bill for tearing down a lower unit and replacing shattered drive gears. Cha-ching! So, what's a boater to do? It's simple, really: Watch where you're going and carry a spare propeller on board. You never know what could be in your path.
For example, an editor for a national boating magazine - not this one, of course - was test-driving a new Sea Ray bow rider on the Tennessee River, when a floor mat lying on the aft seat to prevent boarding passengers' footprints blew out the back. No big deal. We, er, he turned around and looked for it, but it must have sunk to the bottom. Coming back down the river on another boat, the editor was enjoying the scenery, exchanging stories with Sea Ray folks and checking out the new boat's interior. A sickening thump came from the stern area, followed by intense vibration as the boat slowed. He stuck it in neutral, killed the engine and trimmed the stern-drive up. It emerged from the water, bearing the lost mat, which was chewed up and snarled in the prop and wrapped around the shaft. The mat did no damage, and the group was off and running again as soon as the strands were cut loose. But had he been looking ahead, rather than running his mouth and checking out the interior, that never would have happened.
Operator Error
Lots of cars - and boats - have been towed to the dealership because the engine won't start. The technician first checks to see if the engine has a spark and fuel to the cylinder. If the plugs fire, but there is no fuel, he doesn't check the carburetor or the injectors. He sits at the helm, turns the key and checks the fuel gauge. More likely than not, the thing is out of gas. Well, duh! What sounds so simple and elementary is likely to be overlooked when trouble strikes.
For example, at Yamaha's press introduction of the new LS2000, one of the boat's engines wouldn't start. Well, a boat full of magazine editors - nobody ever said editors were very bright - had just shut it down to pick up a skier. Now only one engine would fire. They lifted the hood and started nosing around to see if maybe a coil wire had come loose or something.
Still, nothing
They could get back to shore on one engine, but it would have been a little embarrassing to leave in a boat with two running engines and come back with anything less. They were about to limp back to shore when someone noticed that the left engine's kill switch had been bumped to the off position. Here was a group of people who spend a lot of time around boats - experts, one could surmise - and they knew enough to look for loose wires, which is simple, but not simple enough. Lesson? Check the really simple stuff first. Imagine if that had been your boat and you had to be towed in because the kill switch was flipped off or the boat was out of gas. The guys at the marina would have laughed at you as hard as the guys who found that poor sap's trailer still strapped to his boat.
Trailer Awareness
It's also important to realize that accidents and foul-ups don't just happen on the water. They are just as frequent even before you stick the boat in the water. Toward that end, let's learn from some of the mistakes we've ... uh, seen others make.
When picking up a photography boat after a day-long shoot, one editor didn't think to remove the bolt-on tower. It was rainy and dark and, thanks to rush-hour traffic, he was running late. When he jumped out of the truck to walk back to the trailer to guide the boat driver, he landed waist-deep in cold lake water. Cold, wet and otherwise miserable, he never thought to unbolt the tower and proceeded to take out the lowest branches of every tree between the lake and the office. Some $600 later, the tower was repaired, but the jokes and torment continue.
In another incident, a guy fastened a cable lock around the trailer wheels to thwart thieves. "If the wheels won't turn, they can't steal the boat," which is true, but he forgot to remove the cable before he set out for the lake. When the cable went taut as he drove away, it snapped the fiberglass fender off the trailer. One hundred dollars for a lesson learned. This the same guy with several chunks missing from his garage door from lower units being backed into it, and the same guilty party who nearly lost a boat because he didn't screw down the trailer's ball latch enough.
And in the end ...
The point is that anyone can make mistakes, and they usually stem from hurrying or not paying attention, which makes all of them avoidable. If you're new to boating, it's easy to make stupid mistakes, and we hope you've learned from ours, er, others'. Experienced boaters are just as susceptible and a refresher course never hurts. Be sure to keep these lessons in mind this boating season.
I wish there was more stuff like this around for us idiots to read. I am going to buy a boat this spring and I constantly worry about killing myself the first time out.
