I don't suppose I ever posted the story about the first test drive of my boat after I rebuit it.
Pine Flat Lake, weekend before Labor Day
A buddy of mine who owns a Spectra 20' Jet copy (made by Cheyenne) was my spotter boat. Him, his son and I went up to the lake the night before. We parked the truck and launched his boat (his boat had lights a quite a bit of sleeping room) and decided to camp out on the lake. I brought a 5th of Jack for the occasion...his son fell asleep early while we drank beer and passed the bottle back n' forth. We finished a good 5/8 of the bottle that night...speedin' up and down the lake an' whatnot. Ran out of smokes that night and the marina didn't open until 8AM the next morning. Oh well...time to go to sleep.
Next morning we wake up...it's about 7AM. We go back to the dock and get my boat...as I'm backing it in the water there's a bunch of fisherman who were out on a tournament waitin' in the channel to recover. My header pipes facing them with no baffles in them I'm thinkin' "Oh they're gonna love this shit!" Fire it up...motor sounds nice, strong and healthy. He gets in his boat...I'm still buzzed from the night before, but I do a couple more shots and grab my beer and we idle out. As soon as we hit the end of the no wake zone, I hit it.
Get on plane at a pretty good speed...look back and I had my buddy damn good on the hole shot. Then I look at the speedometer..."That's only 30!? Phock that!" Punch it....40...45...50....55...get it up to about 62...surprisingly the boat feels very stable at that speed. Hauled ass to the marina....by that time they were open and I could buy more smokes.
I get there and tie up to the fuel dock...that was the only place to park. My buddy finally gets there and he's all "What you replacing the gas you burned gettin' over here!?" He was shocked at the performance of my boat...he told me he knew there were jet boats that could do that, he's just never seen one do it.
In any event, I get my smokes, do another shot and we head out. End of the no wake zone...hit it. I'm haulin' ass...doin' turns and what not...straighten out...figured we'd head for windy gap. All of a sudden...a huge amount of water rushes to the front of the boat.
WTF!!!??? I was hoping I had just blown a hose off cause that would've been easily fixable. However, my luck I look back over the engine and I see this crack at the top part of the suction housing! OH SHIT!!! I turned the bilge pump on and drove back to my buddy. "Dude we gotta go back to the dock...my pump's cracked...I'm sinking!" Well he had already run out of gas on one of his tanks and couldn't figure out how to switch over to the other one. He tells me to just drive back to the dock and he'll meet me there.
So I'm driving back...boat porpoising like a mufuka...about halfway there the engine completely dies. Wake swamps over back of the boat...as if I didn't already have enough water coming in as it was. There I am...dead in the water...water coming in faster than the bilge pump could pump it out...no other boats on the water. OH MY GOD $30,000.00 WORTH OF MY WORK IS ABOUT TO BE AT THE BOTTOM OF PINE FLAT!!! All I could do was grab a flare and my air horn and go stand on the front of the boat and hope I can delay the sinking of it. I stood right on the tip of the bow, lit off the flare and blasted the horn. I'm yelling to this family of people on the beach "HELP! I'M SINKING!!!" like what the hell are they gonna do for me...I'm freakin' out..
Just then I see a boat. I blast my horn again...turns out it's my buddy...he got his tank switched over and got there as soon as he could. I hooked my bow line on and threw him the other end...he tied it onto his boat and towed me as quickly as he could to the dock. We get to the dock...I run up to the truck and get the trailer backed in the water.
I get the winch hooked to the bow, locked it and got back in the truck. Start to pull it out and the damn winch comes unlocked!!! "DAMN THIS THING WANTS TO SINK!!!" Back it back in, get out, winch it up, relock it, get back in the truck and get her out of there.
I pulled the drain plug and let the water drain.
The crack ran all the way from the handhole cleanout to the end of the housing where it bolts to the intake! WHAT THE HELL COULD'VE DONE THAT!?
As for what killed the motor...I had the anchor sitting back by the engine. When enough water accumulated in the back, the anchor rope floated over to the pump and the U-Joint driveline grabbed it and it got wrapped around that, killing the engine. OH MY GOD PLEASE DON'T TELL ME I KILLED THE MOTOR!!!
We found someone with a pearing knife and proceeded to cut the rope off. It took us a good 1/2 hour to get it all off...it was wrapped pretty tightly around the driveline. Once we got all of it out I went and turned the key and the motor fired right up. THANK GOD!!!
The next weekend Beerjet and I got on it...when we got the pump apart we figured out what had happened. It could've been prevented had I checked the thrust clearance and seen that it wasn't right...but I didn't do that. Hard lesson learned.
