After a nice long day out on the water with friends we all motored back to their place on the water for some bbq goodness. They have a nice 3 seater jetski and everybody was taking turns heading out on it. My wife took my son and a friend's son out. After about 45 minutes as dark is approaching my cell phone rang.
Unusual number.
Fast forward a little....She had flipped the ski, and of course didn't know how to right it. It sank in about 5 ft of water with just the nose sticking up. Some young bucks coming back from the hooha at Dobbins Island stopped to help; they dragged the boat to shallower water, took the kids aboard their boat and waited while a friend and I headed out to find them.
Yes, find them.
There's a great lesson to be learned here about knowing where you are and not just knowing "how to get back." Nobody could give me a good point of reference, my wife's directions to where she thought she was were oceans away from reality, and it was getting dark fast.
Anyway one of the lads figured out that they were near "blinking red #12."
"Aha! On my way!"
Got to that marker, and sure enough there's somebody anchored there. But it was another boat that had broken down. Boy were they disappointed when I told them I'd have to come back for them if time allowed. They said they had plenty of beer though, and weren't in any kind of distress.
Looked about 100 yards towards shore and found what we were looking for.
4 of us dragged the boat up into shallow water and onto a beach. I had a syphon on my boat so we started draining it and bailing with a small bucket.
Got her to float! One problem out of the way.
Towed it upriver at a snail's pace, pulling it with my little bass boat while being nearly creamed by the drunks flying back in from boobiefest at the island.
By this time it was 11:00pm. I was tired and it was DARK. I figured I's be safe and leave the boat there for the night.
Phone rang at 8:00am this morning.
"Your boat sank."
I leave that boat in the water for weeks at a time with no problems. I've certainly left it in worse water than a no wake zone in the upper Magothy.
We don't know what happened. There was no breach of the hull, all the plugs were in and intact....no problems with the intakes for the livewells.
Only thing we can think of is that it was tied it too loose at the pier and maybe it got pinched underneath at high tide...although the tide would've had to have been
really high last night for this to happen.
Anyway, we got it pulled up onto some shallow rocks/beach as the tide was going out. Got just enough of the boat out of the water to pump her out. We used to high speed sump pumps and it took about 30 minutes to get her empty and afloat. Fuel tank was full of saltwater (Thankfully it was down to fumes in the tank anyway, that was another reason why I didn't bring it home last night), both batteries had been completely submerged as were the throttle, gauges and electronics. Thankfully the motor stayed above the water!
Anyway....believe it or not, after disconnecting the fuel line I tried the key and it turned over. We then hooked a 6 gallon portable tank to it with fresh gas and I tooke her all the way back to cape St Claire at idle. I can't believe the battery worked.
Motor, steering and trim all works fine. All the gauges are dead and I didn't even try the small vhf or fish/depthfinder.
I hosed the hell out of it with fresh water and sprayed 2 full cans of WD40 on everything metal for now. Still have to get the fuel tank emptied (I pumped the prime bulb and it's pure saltwater coming out.) I've been wanting a slightly larger fuel tank anyway, and pulling this one will be really easy....so maybe that's what I'll do. While it's out i"m going to replace the pumps and all the wiring from the batteries to the dashboard.
Wish me luck, and maybe I'll see you all on the water before it's too cold out.
And thanks to Matt at Cypress Marine for stopping help my wife and son and their friend. I'll be in touch soon.
(Oh yeah...the ski? Got her on the lift last night and completely drained, sprayed down with WD40. This morning we had a mechanic do some work on it...got it running as good as new within an hour or so. $150 on a Sunday. Sounds like a good deal to me.
)