Am I crazy or are you just stupid?

Today I saw a boat and the boat did not have a strut, rudder, or prop because someone hit something so hard it ripped the entire driveline off the bottom of the boat. I can understand a bent prop from some crap in the water but come on a rudder completly sheared off. Is this just stupid driving? not paying attention? It scary to think that these people are on the lake where i wakeboard. Or am I just completely crazy to think that this person is not smart.

I have seen people hit wing dams under water and do the same thing. It's more common than you think.

"Wing Dams" ??? What are those ?

Yea I have heard of people hitting submerged islands just under the water surface and the prop and shaft is smashed into the ground so hard/deep it wouldnt come out, and yes it ripped off the rudder. What lurks just under the water and all the things we have ALMOST hit would amaze you

You just jinxed yourself Ryan.
With the lake levels being lower than normal it is bound to happen.

The Spokane River has a shelf at 2200' elevation (or whatever). The idea being that Lake Coeur d'Alene can't drain past that point if the dam was ever damaged. I've hit that shelf going like 2 mph in April (no damage to the boat). I called the power company (who owns the dam & regulates the lake level) to bitch about there being no signs or warning about this. They told me that every year someone always hits that shelf at mach speed & thrashes their boat into bits & pieces.

Must be like a wing dam.

I live on the Mississippi River there are many channels, old rock pilings from dismantled bridges (that are usually marked) and abrupt changes in water depth. Many rivers and lakes have hidden dangers if you are not aware. If you know the lake you should be good. Gotta love the depthfinder!

Okay here's how it works:
WARNING spring water levels have LOWERED!

Everyone now is the time to be on red alert for water depth issues until fall. Sad to say.

I ride in a shallow river ( 4-6') happens a few times a year to someone I know.

hopefully you never hit anything, couldn't imagen how you'd feel about yourself being as how low you think of people who have.... forest gump said it best s**t happens, no one's perfect. doesn't mean your an irresponsible crazy driver because you do. hahaha obviously i've hit stuff out on the delta before.

This is one of the more inane threads in a while... anyone who has been around inboards and towsports for a while knows hitting submerged obstacles comes with the territory.

It happens more times than you think. It happened to me this past weekend and I was monitoring the water depth closely. I was in 15' plus of water and all of a sudden bang!! I was just coasting along, my speedo's where not even reading yet. Turns out I hit a large rock formation out in the middle of nowhere. Was just below the water. All around it was 9' deep and it as only about 2'in dia., I guess it was just my luck. Took out prop, strut, rudder. They were still attached but bend beyond repair. Took it to the shop and they're telling me 2-3K ouch
.

I ride on the upper Willamette south of Portland, Or. I can go through an area all year and not see anything in the water. Then the next outing when the water level has dropped just a little there is a stump sticking out of the water!! I can't imagine towing someone over a stump just inches under the water. At late summer flows the river is very slow so there is no tell-tale signs by looking at the water there is anything there until BAM! Very scary.

I guess it was more common then I thought. I guess Im crazy

Yup, very common and sux arse!

http://s355.photobucket.com/albums/r480/helinut01/

Oh and you'll be lucky at $2-3K for repairs. $6,007.53 for the above work of art!

Wow, Shawn mine looks worse than that. I'm glad I did not have the wedge down. What got replaced and what was the extent of fiberglass/gelcoat work. I have two small pieces of gel coat missing on either site of the strut by the prop. Hoping it's there not fiberglass stress cracks. So far it's the prop, strut, rudder, shaft.

Everything you damaged, plus the wedge and actuators for the wedge. I believe just the actuators are something like $350 alone. Wedge has got to be in the $750 range I would imagine. I had just a little gel coat damage in the top right of that picture and I guess a couple of other very small spots.

And I was just saying about 2 weeks before this how I appreciated having a place to boat where I didn't have to worry about hitting anything. Official place foot in mouth statement there! It's still in the shop too so I'm not sure what exactly is getting replaced. Hope to have it back in a couple of weeks.



(Message edited by helinut on July 31, 2008)

Shawn.. you got Raped brotha! Hopefully you turned it into insurance.

Yeah I turned it in to insurance. We'll see if I got raped or not Hope to have it back next week. This week would be awesome... but I doubt it.

We ride on a river that has a lot of barge traffic, so they have to maintain certain depths, that being said, there are still things that we have hit over the years. We have damaged props and shafts. It is especially bad after a big rain and a lot of logs and limbs have washed into the river.

My partner hit an underwater boulder at Shaver Lake. Tore the rudder completely off, the prop was as bad as our Malibu dealer had ever seen. The hit drove the prop up into the bottom of the boat, and went through the gelcoat into the fiberglass. I'll try to post a pic tomorrow. Insurance was great, and paid for everything. Cost to cure damages was $8500, and 3 months out of the season. It had about 60 man hours of gelcoat repair. Malibu fixed it better than new.

If the wedge would of been down, the back of the boat would of been torn off for sure.

About 5 years ago (wow... has it been that long?) I was in a new part of a river that I had ridden many times before. We had been running over the same spot for two days. The rider fell and the guy driving my boat (I was taking pics) pulled back on the throttle and BAM, fully loaded Sunsport with 2000+ pounds of water and 6 people came out of the water and dropped back in. Immediately the bilge turned on.

Long story short... 6' long and 4-8 inch wide gash down the starboard stringer starting just behind the driver and running to about 12" from the transom, and 10" of submerged tree wedged in the stringer. A few very vital occurrences saved my boat that day... Good people who basically lifted 1/2 to 3/4 full launch pads out of the boat, the gash was directly on the stringer so water wasn't coming in as fast as it could have, no running gear was damaged so we were able to make it to something similar to a shore, and lots of bilge pumps. Scariest thing ever in my boating life.

I could have let the boat go to the bottom and I would have gotten a new one... but I couldn't let my baby sink. 3 weeks out of commission and $7,500 in fiberglass and stringer work and she was better than new. The what ifs will never go away though.

Anyway... it does happen. You can't see what is down there, and no amount of boating experience can save you from what you can't see.

Here are a few pics of our tragedy. B-O-O-H-O-O!

DOH

ouch

damn, that hurts to look at.

Yep. It bent the shaft so bad, that they had to replace the strut due to the fact that they could not get it off the shaft. They gave us the shaft/ strut/ prop (all in one piece), as a memento.

Yup, way more common than you are probably used to seeing. We've busted a prop and put a good bend in the strut, luckily the shaft stayed true when we pulled the strut and prop to get fixed. I don't know how we didn't grab the rudder when we hit, but it would have probably caused some problems.

Was out riding saturday with some friends, including the local Ronix rep who had just picked up his new Xstar. Completely ripped off oposing blades on the prop when they nailed a hidden stump. The other two blades were perfect, no strut or shaft issues at all.

Lots of weird things can happen to people on the water, even those who know what they are doing. Some of those pics are gnarly!

This just happend to a guy last weekend. Heres what he had to say and the pics.

I was boating on the Sacramento River last weekend and hit an unseen submerged tree.
Location was between Verona and Knights landing. Nobody else will hit the tree because we tied a red ski bouy to the tree.

I bought my boat new in 1995 and WAS in perfect condition.

That sucker was right dead center in the middle of the river, I could have been two feet to the right or left and I would have missed it.
Just my luck that day.






(Message edited by bkoz on August 06, 2008)

More pics

I was gonna launch out of Knights Landing last weekend but was told about things like this up there so I launched at Elkhorn istead.

Oh btw, this guy has been boating the Sac river for MANY years and never had this happen.

Holy crap Mike! That one puts mine to shame! I have very little gel coat damage. I haven't heard if there was much if any fiberglass damage. I think the power wedge ramped my bill up quite a bit. Shouldn't have had that damn thing down!

Yeah, it sucked! I'm just glad I wasn't in the boat. They said it was the worst sound ever.