2 Boats Sunk, Retrieved, Floated, Towed Home and Running Again in Under 12 Hours.

[crabby and son]

I can't for the life of me figure out how you sink a Sea Doo..Glad it all ended well........Gary

[Bend-Lure]

That is pretty bad-ass to flip a three seater Sea-Doo. Kudos.

[Spot77]

Originally Posted by Bend-Lure

That is pretty bad-ass to flip a three seater Sea-Doo. Kudos.

Yeah, my wife is one of a kind. See the above post.

[Spot77]

So I'll keep the updates coming in case anyone is interested...maybe I'll inadvertently share some tidbit of knowledge that's useful to somebody.

Today I drained the fuel tank. It was WAY easier than I thought, aided by a siphon that I had purchased at Bass Pro last year for emergencies. Well it paid off big time. I used it to help drain the previously mentioned jet ski and get it afloat and now it made fast work out of draining 12 gallons of saltwater from my fuel tank.

It's the "self priming" kind that you shake a little to get it started. Very similar, if not exactly like the copper 3.5 gpm model here: http://www.simplesiphon.com/products/

There was about a half gallon left that I couldn't get with the siphon, so I simply used the prime bulb to shoot the remaining water into a gas can. It didn't even have a faint smell of gas to it.

Next step with the fuel system: Change the water separator filter and add a half gallon of fresh, heavily oiled gas to the tank and run that through the prime bulb again. That should clean out the remaining pint or so of water and lube the pickup tube pretty well. I'll burn that slightly watery gas through my weedwacker.

When the rest of the electrical items are taken care of, and I'm ready to get her in the water again, I'll refill the fuel tank completely with a little extra oil and some Startron to burn through. Again, the motor itself wasn't submerged so once the fuel tank, lines, and prime bulb are clean I should be ok there.

Any other suggestions on bringing the fuel system back up to speed?

[garlien]

I for one want to see pictures of you when you..."Lube the Pickup Tube".....

Does the wife know you are doing that kind of stuff ?

[Spot77]

Got all the wires traced to the appropriate electronics and gauges. I'll run some new wires since domeare the originals from 1993, and some others just need new connectors put on due to the massive corrosion at the battery terminals. Anything that had juice flowing through it when the battery submerged got trashed and brittle overnight pretty much.

Removed the cd player and trashed it. (Yeah I know.....I cd player on a little bass boat......but the boat has to pull double duty as a rec boat when my wife and kids want to go out )

[Spot77]

The 2 seats are FUBAR, so I'm going to replace those today and have the originals reupholstered....just the bottoms are ruined and I want to keep the original logo'd seats since they're incredibly rare. So I'll sport around with a pair of aftermarket seats for a while.

I nead to replace 2 small sections of decking. This isn't really related to the sinking, but the boat is 17 years old and there's just a hair of softness where the seats driver and passenger seat mount.

Any recommendations on where to get a 4x8 sheet of 3/4 or 1 inch marine plywood? Does anyone sell them in 4'x4' sections?

[Spot77]

Originally Posted by crabby and son

I can't for the life of me figure out how you sink a Sea Doo..Glad it all ended well........Gary

Me either....but apparently it is possible.

You need to know my wife to understand how vehemently she enforces Murphy's Law.

"Anything that can go wrong, will."