bad day on the lake yesterday
 

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was floating yesterday next to this huge lake house showing some friends that have never been on this particular lake. water was 6 1/2 ft deep. i bumped the boat into gear out of N and turned the wheel to get the boat turned back toward open water. was moving MAYBE 3 mph if that. we must have been sitting right on top of a stump or big rock. as soon as i put it in gear we heard a loud clunk. whatever we hit bent the prop a little bit and completely snapped the rudder off...WTF!!!

but on a side note..you can steer the boat at slow speeds by sticking your leg off the back swim deck to the side you want to turn. haha

haha the last line is awesome. Always good to see people make light of a bad situation. Good luck on the repair buddy hope you get back on the water soon

Wow I have never seen a rudder snap off like that!. Thanks for the steering tip too, LOL. Good luck getting back on the lake.

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it was about 7pm last night. there were hardly ANY BOATS around us so i was like what the hell are we gonna do. i was just barely at idle and my buddy jumped in and held the deck trying to somewhat steer us. after a few minutes and being tired already he got up and sat on the deck with his feet dangling in the water. we noticed it was making the boat turn to the left, so we tried the other side and it turned right. was a long slow trip back to the boat ramp, but luckily we made it adn got the boat loaded up with no problems..all by the leg-rudder haha

Boy that sucks big time!
Did you dive in to find the rudder?

That makes me cringe just thinking about it, and you're taking it a lot better than I would have. I just hope it's not a brand new boat and you've at least gotten some good use out of the boat this season, other wise I would be sick. Just hope it's not too big of a job to get fixed

Sucks, but think of the bright side. No gelcoat damage, hopefully no shaft and strut damage! New rudder, fix prop and you're back on the water!

WOW- That makes me wonder if there was a defect in the rudder! I have never seen that happen. Seen plenty bent, usually accompanied by MASSIVe prop and gel coat damage- Any chance that's somethig covered under warranty?? Wierd.

That sucks but doesn't look like too big of a job. you will need to have someone repair/tune the prop. Should be around $150 or so. It looks like a clean break on the rudder. I am not sure how much those are. I wonder if the Rudder had some sort of abnormality in the metal to break that clean off at slow speed?

Never seen something like this but like others have said you maybe blessed it just snapped. I'd rather have that then a bent one with gel and glass damage. This is why I don't get anywhere close to shallow.

yes i couldnt see any gel coat damage luckily. i too am curious about the rudder breaking so easily. of course my dealership is closed on Mondays so i have to wait until tomorrow to see what they say. it would be nice if they could somehow get it covered under warranty but i doubt i am that lucky.

william..i always stay away from shallow spots at speed. but i was basicaly floating and ive floated in that same area 100s of times letting the kids swim. i will be finding a new swim area for sure. i cant imagine if one of them had jumped off the swim deck and hit whatever we were sitting on top of. scared me more from that thaught than the damage the boat got.

I'm thinking your rudder broke - looks like the shaft was weak, your prop hit the rudder which is what you heard... I doubt you hit anything.

I've turned a rudder into a taco before... it didn't snap off the shaft. Your shaft is brass and mine was stainless, but still... something seems funny here.

how would the rudder just break floating along?

Actually you got lucky... The nebril shaft rudders are designed to sheer and not cause $2k worth the fiberglass work.. If it was a satinless steel shaft it would have torn it up.. Your only out around $300 instead of $2-$3K...

Lucky Day!!

im hoping i can get the new rudder, new prop(since i doubt i could get mine repaired same day) and labor for less than $1000

Guy I worked with had a bad situation. They were anchored up offshore and his son dove off of the boat. He basically stuck like a nail and caused all sorts of issues. Ended up in the hospital for awhile and lots of PT. Not sure exactly what the injury was but it was pretty severe. Obviously I'm not rolling around with a fishfinder to check out entire areas but I keep myself at 20+ ft now especially when I'm with the kids. Maybe its overkill but I stay in the middle of coves.

Bill.... you should be able to do this work yourself, easily, with minimal tools , saving you a lot of money.

Prop replacement and rudder replacement. 2-5 hours tops. The hardest part may be the rudder shaft, hopefully that slides out once you remove the bolt from the top. IF its jammed in their, then 4 bots remove the whole assembly and you can punch the shaft out of there. The only pain may be getting enough clearance from your prop guard on trailer to be able to slide the new rudder in. I had to jack my boat up off the rear of the trailer 2-3 inches in order to get my rudder in, hopefully your boat is different.

good luck.

i may have to try that if i cant get it into the service dept and possibly get warranty to cover the rudder.

How fast were you going? Most rudders shouldn't shear off at idle.

Additionally, at that slow of a speed, I doubt if you had a stainless shaft that you would have wrecked the fiberglass... I bet there was a flaw in the casting... It may have begun to break, bending towards your prop and your prop kicked it off... its really hard to say...

I went from floating, to barely bumping it in gear to turn the boat...so maybe 3 mph at most

Did you feel the boat hang up or just the prop hit something?

Never felt anything. Just a loud clank a couple times. Killed boat and let wind push us a few feet away. Started back up and noticed we couldn't steer. That's when we noticed prop gone when we dove down to investigate.

Hold up...You need to get prepared for tomorrow, getting your story 100% straight that this was no fault of your own! In fact, you've posted enough info in this thread to prove to me this wasn't your fault and you didn't hit anything. You've been thru the same area 100x's before, you felt/ heard nothing except a clank one or two times suggesting you didn't hit anything submerged - its obvious to me that the rudder just sheared off and hit the prop on its decent downward.

At 3mph, with a prop hitting lake bottom/object, your going to hear each prop blade hit whatever it is underwater before your rudder contacts the object. Thuds or chopping sounds are heard, not metal clanks. Each ear of the prop would have likely been damaged or curled over, but in the pic there is only significant damage to one prop ear. Unless you love paying out of pocket for repair work that wasn't your fault, you've got to point the finger at MB on this one. Also, I've never seen a rudder sheer off at 3mph. IMO, this is 110% warranty claim related due to faulty rudder construction. Start searching online to see if MB forums have any documentation of past rudder failures, or better yet, the company MB sourced the rudder from having rudder shear issues.

Be confident in yourself as a boater and the fact that this wasn't uncharted water for you. It is not unheard of to run boats in 6.5ft of water, especially at idle speeds. Sorry to hear about the damage and best of luck on your warranty claim.

My thoughts exactly.

i definetly have a great dealership and a great service manager to work with. Im hoping that they can work something out with me. if it was something i truly did myself through negligence i would fess up. a $1000 isnt going to break my wallet, but if it was truly no fault of my own and a bad rudder then i dont want to spend the money to get it fixed for sure! lol

I kind of want to agree with bhyatt but how could the rudder hit the prop when the rudder is behind the prop and the prop wash would be pushing the rudder away from the prop? If you were in reverse I could see that happening but it seems like it would be hard for it to fall forward into the prop. That said crazy crap happens to boats.

Haven't props on certain boats wound up backwards before? Isn't a rudder replacement a pretty involved process in a vdrive? 1000 in labor probably, no?

Meant to say rudder

When I was selling boats we had techs take off all the under water gear(tracking fins, prop, shaft, strut and rudder). I don't think it was a 10 minute job but certainly wasn't anything close to 5 hours.

I think this guy did the same thing...
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Think of the brighter side dude.

Feet first into unknown waters...I hit my head pretty good while diving into the water after the boat shifted from a deep to shallow spot while on the hook. The shift was hardly noticeable but the shift in my spine was easy to detect.