i know this subject is kinda taboo as we all dont want our boats to hear this
but i want to hear yalls opinions and/or stories about cursed boats ,. has anybody here ever owned a boat that no matter what , something always goes wrong or breaks ? ...ill share my story its kind of long hope you dont mind, tell me if you think my boat is cursed
its a 1973 Silverline Jet boat and my dad bought it in '73 as the 2nd owner , when he bought it he thought that he was the original owner of a brand new boat , but on the 1st trip to the lake somebody comes up to him and ask "Hey did you buy that boat from Falcon Marine in Midland TX ?".. my dad tells him yea and the guy says "that boat has almost been sunk before ! "
the story he told was that the original owner of the boat was at a lake with his bother-in-law and they were drunk as hell tearing it up all day in that boat , the lake they were at has a bridge that runs over the lake and they were wanting to drive under the bridge running WFO ,. im not exactly sure what happened after that but they ended up smashing into the bridge and destroying the entire left side of the boat ,.. the guy telling the story seen all this happen from shore and says he has no idea how they made it back to the trailer before the boat sunk ,.so the marine dealership fixed it and sold it again as a new boat
,..so my dad gets it and drove it for the summer and then the first cold night of winter the block cracked from having water left in it ,.. so he had the olds 455 replaced with a olds 425 (?) and drove it for another summer , winter time came and the block cracked again from leaving water in it
(never made that mistake again lol ) ,.so this is in the mid-late 70's when it took its last run for a while ,
fast foward to 1993 - i am only 4 years old and my dad wants to get the old jet boat going again ,..so he goes and talks to his dad which had a cherry '75 88 olds 455, with only 50,000 miles on it and the motor never ran WOT so it wasnt even broke in yet !,.my dad was wanting to buy the car from him for the motor but just days before this my grandpa sold the car to a junk yard
,.. so my dad rushes to the junk yard and pays out the azz to get the car back ,. they pulled the 455 out , scraped the rest and put the motor in the boat , i actually found the reciept from 1993 when they put the motor in the boat ,.. (only $425 for a motor swap and all new gaskets in '93
),..for some reason my dad never got the boat actually running again untill years later ,..
fast foward to 2000- i am 11 years old now and getting big enough to start wrenching on stuff to , so we got the boat running again after 2 years of hard work EVERY day ,. my dad would work a 8-9 M-S work week and still come home every night and put hours into the boat ,.we finally got it running pretty good and took it to the lake for a few years , without any more real problems , but something would always go wrong with it ..
so around 2004 we started a project on what we thought would be just ''repainting the boat'' , and this is where all the gremlins came back into play
, we started by repainting the boat and getting new windows , carpet , seats, new wiring ect ect , got all of that stuff replaced and the motor was running good but then the oil pan cracks and we have to pull the motor out,.. this is around 2007 ,.. when we did this we found out that the motor mounts needed replaced , so after tearing into the fiberglass i found out the wooden motor mounts have turned to dust the past 40 years , so while putting new motor mounts in we started to replace the floor and the transom ,.. which literally took about 4 months just to tear everything out of the boat ,.them Minnesota fawkers build a tough boat to tear apart ! LOL ,,.
we finally get everything close to being done and my dad was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2011, he only made it another 4 months after that and it breakes my heart to say it but after all the work he put into this boat , he never got a chance to ride in it
after that the boat was passed on to me just like my dad always said it would be and i brought it down to Austin TX where i live now ,..i tried to get the boat running since it had not fired up in more than 4 years but i couldnt because when when the wiring was done my dad had a friend from his work do the wiring and the guy did a massive hack job ,.so i ended up pulling everything out of the boat and wired it all myself learing how to do it as i went along (so easy a caveman can do it
),.i got the boat running pretty good on the hose so i took it out for its "maiden voyage'',.
the boat makes a 10 minute run and blows all the gaskets , fills the oil full of water and destroyed the bearings (didnt know about the bearings untill to late),(WTF ??).. it turns out that the guy that previously did the hack job electrics also thought it would be a good idea to remove the thermostat ,..so with the cooling setup my boat has it never heated up and killed the motor ,.. i tore it apart and found blown gaskets , broken lifters , oil full of water , ect ect ,.. so i tried to be sneaky and just replace the gaskets, lifters, cam , oil pump , thermostat , ect ect .. i got it all put back together and running pretty good for a few minutes after that ,. i was breaking in the new cam and all of a sudden Kuuurrchu`nk ! the motor locks up ,.. after tearing it all the way apart this time i found that it spun almost every bearing and destroed the crank ,.. also had a broken piston ring but THANK GOD it did not score up the cylinder
so here i am now , im good with jet skis but this offically my first 4 stroke build ever and the only helping hand i got is at the end of my own arm , thats my story ,..cursed boat or just the nut behind the wheel syndrome ? lol
39 years of being in the family and this project is still going on to this day
