So,I went to the River this weekend (met 78cole,that was pretty cool!) Anyway,Saturday was a picture perfect day,boat was perfect,weather was perfect,taught my 14 y/o boy to wakeboard,which was VERY COOL....sunday..well,not so good..(not real bad,but not real good either)made a couple of passes,took the boy and his buddy "boardin'" and took them for a pass on the tube.Went back to camp,had lunch and decided to take both of my girl's and their boyfriends for a ride.. left Needles,headed for "Pirates Cove",got about half way there, where there is not a whole lot of "beaches"in that area,cruisin' down river in very calm water and noticed that the boat is "porposing" (sp)at this point I turned on the bilge,but cant see from my angle if anything was coming out,I could see my older (21) daughter,in the passenger front seat in the corner of my eye looking at me,but I didnt want her to think anything was wrong,so I stayed cool. Tryin' to figure out what the hell was goin on.
I'm still cruisin' (and bouncin' up and down) and my younger daughter (20) in the back seat say's...Uhhh,Daddy?
I turn around and look and water was almost up to the back of the front seats!! I look to my right and there is no shore...I look to my left and there is a "little" sandy beach and no traffic coming the other way....so's I hang a left and tell all the kids to "hang on"! I drive the boat right UP ON TO the beach and as I do the motor stalls! I lift the motor cover and the whole engine and compartment is FULL of water...I let it sit and drain with the pump,so I can see what the hell is leaking,finally drains after about 10 minutes. When I bought this boat back in February,I noticed that the water hoses had been replaced. And done pretty well,insulated with exterior hose and zip ties anywhere they were rubbing.
Problem was...they forgot to replace the one MOST IMPORTANT hose,the intake hose from the "squirt" (jet) to the motor,and it let go!!!! I pull to the shore,find this out and think GREAT..now what the hell am I gonna do??? So coming off that hose is a "T" to hook up a garden hose to run it out of the water,so I figure...well,I'll just use that hose to replace the one on the jet and cut the other one down past the hole and cap that one. Then I find out I have nothing to cut the hose with,my daughter walks over to some peep's that were there and asked if they had anything to cut with...they said all we have is these plastic picnic butter knives . So i take it,come to find out the hose was so soft i was actually able to cut it with that
Anyway...fixed the leak,than the damn thing would'nt start,at that point I realized that the whole motor had been swamped when I pulled on to the beach,so I pulled off the USCG approved air filter pounded/dried out the water the best I could and pulled off the (still point's) distributor cap and dried it with my t-shirt.....Got it fired up,headed back to camp,"SAFELY",drank 2 Ice cold beer's and headed for home! Long story short....Holy Shit! What a day...but the MOST IMPORTANT thing was I got my kidz home safely and DID'NT sink the boat after all. It's kind cool havin' some boating experience and common knowledge in what to do in case of emergency!
__________________
<~~~~ Skee at the River!
