Bad luck, Brian! I hope that the big motor is repairable.
Chris
> On 13 May 16, at 22:09, Rick Beckrich <rbeckrich@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Bummer, Brian.
> What a tough way to find out how well your "serviceman" stands behind his
> expensive work.
> Don't know anything about your laws, but here you would have grounds for a
> serious settlement. (Life endangerment, stress, pain, etc.)
> Wish you good luck on the outcome. You've had more than enough of the bad
> kind.
> Rick
> On May 13, 2016 8:15 AM, <bj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>
>
> Hi all.
>
> Well, Nathan gives us lots to think about in his world,
> even though he is exceptionally busy.
>
> My turn ...
>
>
> http://zone-10.com/tope2/main.php?g2_itemId=20092
>
> Some of you might
> remember that last year, well before we had our house fire, I retrieved
> my long-stored boat and spent a lot of time cleaning it up, making the
> rig road-worthy, and having the two motors thoroughly serviced at quite
> some expense.
>
> Then we had the major distraction of the house fire.
>
>
> In the 70's, when I was still single, on this boat I used to do a LOT
> of sea fishing for tuna and other species, and lake fishing for trout.
> So I wanted to use my fishing platform for trout fishing here. I bought
> some suitable fishing gear to replace that lost in the fire, and bought
> a winter fishing licence.
>
> On the first few times when I tried
> shake-down cruises, the main OMC 135 hp motor was very reluctant to
> start so I had that sorted out abut 3 weeks ago. Turned out that the
> design included two separate controls for choking the motor when
> starting, and they competed in an unhelpful way. So my service-man
> disabled the least useful of the two.
>
> About 10 days ago I felt I
> needed a break from house-planning etc chores, the weather was OK, and i
> had the gear, so I loaded up with fuel and headed out to the lake.
>
> It
> was beautifully calm when I launched, as one photo shows. The main motor
> started OK; I warmed it up, and set off up the lake at a comfortable
> planing speed. I did notice a slight smell of heating but couldn't think
> what that might be, so ignored it. After about 5 minutes there was this
> urgent scream from the engine alarm system, I looked back and saw a lot
> of smoke coming from the motor, so I shut it down. I left the cover on
> in case letting oxygen in to the motor area would set the smoke alight.
> after about 10 minutes I did open the cover and let the smoke dissipate.
> Both banks of cylinder-heads had all the paint scorched to black.
>
> I
> called the service-man on my cell, and he asked me to see if the motor
> would still turn over. It could, so it wasn't seized.. He said the alarm
> was designed to go off before major damage was caused. I could not see
> anything which would have impeded cooling water flow into the motor, so
> it was a mystery.
>
> What to do next? Well, thought I, I'm here on the
> lake with the little motor which still goes, so lets do some rolling -
> that's what it is for.
>
> I set up a trolling line, and had some trouble
> getting it to feed off the reel, so I pulled a fair bit out into the
> water, by hand, and then started moving to get the line right out. Very
> soon after, the little motor came to a very sudden stop. What the ??
> Turned out that all that loose line, aided and abetted by the wind which
> was getting up, had brought the line to where it tangled around the
> propellor. I spent the next 15 minutes cutting it free.
>
> By this time
> the NW wind was starting to rise and I thought that discretion was the
> better part than valour, and decided to head back to the launching ramp
> and go home.
>
> That boat is a great sea boat with all that freeboard,
> and can handle a big sea very well. But that freeboard also means that
> it catches wind too well when it is not needed, AND I found that
> steering with that little motor is in fact difficult when it's windy.
> All good experience, I suppose.
>
> I eventually made it the 2 - 3 KM back
> to the ramp area, and was trying to steer to the posts at the side of
> the ramp, when the little motor cut out. The shore there is very rocky.
> I managed to get away from the rocks using my third means of propulsion
> - paddles. But they are difficult to use as the boat is so wide that one
> person alone it constantly moving from one side of the boat to the other
> in order to keep something of a straight course. The wind made it very
> difficult - by this tie it had picked up to more than 20 km/hr and it
> was blowing me to the rocks. Eventually I made it to the down-wind
> pontoons where some campers helped me secure the boat more or less
> safely..
>
> I waited about 3 hours, all the time trying to stop the boat
> bashing itself too much against the pontoon.
>
> Eventually, the two
> campers helped pull me to the ramp area using a very long sea anchor
> rope I had fortuitously stowed on board that morning.
>
> From that point
> I made it home without further incident. The service-man hasn't
> inspected the motor yet.
>
> Brian
>
>
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