Fuck me. **boating content** 😕

[2Driver]

Ah man that is nauseating to watch. They are safe and that’s the man thing.

 

[DILLIGAF]

That sucks but glad the family all got off safely. A nightmare for sure

 

[Desert Whaler]

Props to your Father in Law for keeping it together. Solid VHF communication, solid PFD useage, and able to relay location accurately. Well done.
The fact that everyone was able to step-off the boat rather than being pulled out of the water was a blessing under the circumstances. Sucks big time . . . but hope he can find comfort in knowing that he did everything right !

I broke a shifter cable on a boat a few years back off Palos Verdes, no biggie, threw the anchor and called Vessel Assist. The dispatcher wanted to confirm my location and asked if we were just off Santa Cruz Island . . . . oops . . .I screwed up reading the Lat/Lon numbers . . . and there was ZERO stress at the time.

Glad everyone is safe and dry !

 

[C08H18]

Seasoned skipper! Didn't panic, assessed the problem, radioed CG while had battery, and entered the water to try and plug from the outside.

I would carry sponges for this very situation-got me back to port once after loosing a prop shaft and tearing up the fiberglass sleeve.

 

[28Eliminator]

WOW... that just sucks. At least everyone is safe...

 

[spectras only]

That’s terrible. What was the cause of the leak? Bellows?

Looks like a Uniflite 36-38 Aft cabin model. Those are shaft drives.

 

[humvkev]

Wow that sucks! Glad everyone was ok

 

[rush1]

Damn that sucks,so sorry to see this.

 

[rivermobster]

Lemme try this again...

Just got off the phone with my FIL, I'll try and convey what he told me.

Boat was running fine, engine temps normal, when smoke appeared, coming from the engine compartment. When they went to investigate, there was smoke pretty much everywhere and water was rushing in (no fire). They tried to bail with 5 gallon buckets, but just couldn't keep up. Kids got the dingy inflated, while they continued to investigate.

Eventually, the batteries flooded out, and now the boat is dead in the water. You all know the rest.

The assumption is...

The impeller/water pump that keeps the exhaust manifolds cool failed, or a line got something stuck in it. The manifold over heated and that caused the rubber coupler to the transom to fail. There is and was really no way know as they couldn't see anything due to the smoke.

The Coast Guard and Vessel Assist had been doing a training session that morning, so when the call came in, they were all at that dock just hanging around! They showed up in about ten minutes. He said he got a ride back to the dock in a dual jet 700hp Coast Guard boat, so now of course, that's the boat he wants to get now!

Fully insured, and there are no Vessel Assist charges when there is no boat to tow back in.

So sadly, there is no way to know what actually did fail. Just an educated guess on his part.

Thanks for all the kind words and well wishes. I'll send him a link to this thread.

 

[Lucky Larry]

Terrible loss of a nice boat. Glad everyone got off safely.

 

[monkeyswrench]

I've said it before, big blue scares the hell out of me. Honestly, never really thought much about mechanical failure sinking though...I have almost sunk at the river due to a rotted cooling line. Turns out, I'd run, beach, drain and repeat. Never really thought about the same situation at sea

 

[rrrr]

In 1992, my buddy Alan's jet boat sank in Lake Travis after the 4" rubberized exhaust hose between the manifold and transom outlet failed. The boat had an engine cover, and be didn't know he was taking on water until the outcome was decided and the boat was going down.

Here's a post from a few years ago about the retrieval of the boat, it's a good story.
__________________________


This is a long story, but it's a good one.

The jet boat rescue thread reminded me of the time in 1992 when my buddy blew an exhaust hose and sank his jet bote in 55' of water on Lake Travis. The guy that stopped and rescued Alan and three other people had a fish finder and told him the water depth. He called me quite upset because quotes he had received to find the boat and retrieve it were around $3,000. I told him I would call him back in thirty minutes.

I did some calculations, called him back, and told him I needed $1K for expenses, and we would go get the boat. I bought four plastic 55 gallon drums, attached a harness I made with a carabiner on the top end, and installed a 2" PVC plug with a metal valve stem in the bunghole, leaving the other 1" bunghole open.

I gathered up a 2" electric sump pump and 25' of discharge hose, my Emglo compressor and a 100' hose, a 5 kW generator, three coolers of beer, rope, a tarp, a camera, and headed to Austin. Alan called his cousin, who was a scuba diver. He agreed to meet us on Saturday at the lake with four friends that were also divers.

It was mid October, but still warm. We went to a boat rental at the marina, and I rented a 20' pontoon boat, telling the guy we were going to take our wives out to look at the fall foliage.

I docked the boat at Alan's mom's house on the water at Graveyard Point, put a tarp down on the boat deck, and we loaded everything onto the boat, along with 12 scuba tanks and dive gear for five guys. The boat deck was completely covered by all of the stuff.

We drove out to the site of the sinking, and Alan was in the front of the boat telling me where to go. After a few minutes, he told me to stop, and jumped into the water and swam to try and line up the landmarks he had committed to memory when the boat went down. I was thinking we'll never find the thing. About five minutes went by and he said "This is the place." Yeah, right. I dropped a two gallon bucket I had filled with concrete to keep the boat from moving, and the anchor line attached to it had marks in 5' increments. The water depth was 53'.

The water in Travis is not clear, and visibility underwater is not good. I had prepared a 60' long line marked at 10' increments with a carabiner on one end, thinking our best bet was to search in circles and move around in the area. The line was clipped to the anchor line, the divers went in the water, spread out on the marked line, and went to the bottom.

We watched the bubbles from their regulators as they searched, and after the bubbles went about 3/4 of a circle, Alan's cousin popped up on the surface and said "It's right here." I couldn't believe our luck. I thought we would be searching for hours, and it didn't take 10 minutes to find the boat.

We dropped the sump pump and two of the barrels in the water and fired up the generator. The carabiners on the barrels were attached to a line that had been secured to the boat's bow eye, the barrels were filled with water, and they were swam down to the boat and hooked to the bow eye. The compressor was started, the hose was tossed in the water, and taken down to the barrels.

The diver put the air hose on the valve stem on the barrel bungholes, and the compressed air pushed the water out of the small bunghole. When one barrel was emptied and the other was about half empty, the boat headed for the surface. A huge mass of air bubbles from the small bungholes on the barrels appeared as the water pressure decreased, turbulence roiled the surface, and suddenly the two barrels and the bow of the boat blew into view.

By this time, about ten boats had anchored around us, along with a couple of sheriff's deputies in their grey whaler with a small tower and light bars. The deputies were very cool, keeping the scene under control and enjoying the show.

As we were attaching the other two barrels to the transom eyes, a PWC came flying up to the pontoon boat, and attached to it was the owner of the boat rental. The pontoon boat was covered with all sorts of equipment and eight people, and looked like it was engaged in a Discovery Channel show. He wasn't happy, and said "You better have this boat back at the 4:30 due time, and if it's not clean you're gonna pay for a detail." He was pissed I had lied about why we rented the boat.

We filled the other two barrels with water, attached them to the transom lift eyes, and blew the water out until the boat was sitting level three feet under the water. A tow line was rigged, and we slowly headed for the boat ramp.

At the ramp we backed the trailer in deep, and managed to get the bow on the back of the bunks with the trailer winch. I rigged the sump pump and began removing the water in the boat, and as it got lighter, we pulled the boat onto the trailer. In 30 minutes the water was pumped out and the boat was secured on the trailer.

During this time the pontoon boat was at the dock, and Alan's cousin and his friends were removing our equipment and cleaning the boat. We got it back to the rental dock at 4:15, which saved us from paying another half day rent charge.

We took the boat to the house, drained the block, and filled it with diesel fuel. Since it had been underwater for a week, I decided it would be a bad ideas to start it. The interior in the boat was just six months old. All of the cushions were intact, and it was undamaged. Over the winter the engine was rebuilt, the interior was dried and restapled to the plywood, and in March the boat was back in the water.

Remember above I said I took my 35 mm camera? The photos were going to be great, and I would be posting some of them, but when Alan loaded the film on Saturday morning, he didn't put it on the takeup reel correctly.

But overall, success! Finding the boat ten minutes after starting the dive was pretty much a miracle. I had no idea how to raise a sunken boat, but my hillbilly boat retrieval plans worked out perfectly. All in it cost $750.

A few months later, I took one of the PVC caps with the valve stem I had made for the barrels to a trophy shop. The cap was mounted on a desk plaque, and on a play with a popular movie title of the time, the brass plate inscription under it read "ALAN AND RON'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE."

It certainly was. I gave it to Alan on his birthday.

 

[HubbaHubbaLife]

It would be a bit difficult to recover fuel and oil from thousands of feet under the surface.

Two things: 1. Stated 800' 2. Both fuel and oil float... thats how they clean up.

 

[rrrr]

Two things: 1. Stated 800' 2. Both fuel and oil float... thats how they clean up.

I didn't notice the depth was mentioned. I assume the fluids stayed in the fuel tanks and engines. That's what happened in the post above, when my friend's boat sank. The fuel tanks were still full and no water had contaminated them. The engine was full of water, but still had all the oil in it.

I'm not a salvage expert.

 

[nowski]

Hey Joe

Sorry to hear about your FIL's boat. I am just glad everyone made it off safely. It could have been much worse. Boats, like cars can be replaced. Family can't.

The priceless souls, safe and sound is all that really matters at the end of the day...

 

[HubbaHubbaLife]

I didn't notice the depth was mentioned. I assume the fluids stayed in the fuel tanks and engines. That's what happened in the post above, when my friend's boat sank. The fuel tanks were still full and no water had contaminated them. The engine was full of water, but still had all the oil in it.

I'm not a salvage expert.

All good... me either. Thinking we've got some guys with expertise here who might chime in.