What boating mistakes have you made?

[SigSaurP229]

Re: What boating mistakes have you made?

spend half a day fixing trailer lights so you can pass inspection then back into a tree and break a light. Welcome to my saturday.

that sucks

 

[hawkrdr]

Re: What boating mistakes have you made?

Well.. New to the site sort of...
But here are a few of my follies.. They usually have something to do with me not paying full attention to what I am doing at the given time...:facepalm:
Let's see.. So far this year alone...
Decided to replace brakes on the trailer, bought new lines, drums, everything, was amazed with my self how quickly it all went, bled the brakes out, tested the trailer out great, all works fine.
Head out for a family camping trip and trailer the boat with us. Trailer handles great. Back the trailer in to the tightest camping spot I have ever seen (proud of myself at this point, usually our family trips are never smooth...) Next day pull the boat take it to the ramp, go to back down the ramp... Brakes lock up. (WTF moment...) Put truck in drive, pull forward no issues.. Put truck in reverse brakes lock up again, I do this two or three more times and finally give up... (held my temper as best I could..) said screw it and we headed back to the camp ( now, I have to try and back the trailer up again.... fun begins again, if I give the truck gas and the trailer tongue compresses, brakes lock.. :facepalm:
Patiently let the truck idle and back the trailer in.. 30 minutes to back up a trailer.. SO MUCH FUN.... temper still in check.....
Next day we are packing up to go home, I put the kids in the truck to watch a movie as we pack up the camp, well about an hour and a half later, we are ready to hook the boat up. Go to start truck... click click click.... (temper lost......)

Finally get truck jumped and boat hooked up drive all the way home again, and immediately take the trailer to a repair shop near the house that I bought all the parts from, dropped it off. Next day get a call, Brakes were put on backwards... DOH! 50 dollars and I was good to go...



Just this past weekend...
While I was replacing the brakes I decided to replace two of the tires on the trailer as they were pretty worn.. the other two could make it the rest of the season I though...
Well trying to pull in to the gas station I caught one of the non replace tires on the curb right at a spot where the curb was rough. Bent the rim into the tire, tore about 3 inches of side wall off until there was the steel bands showing (surprisingly the tire still held air and I was able to tow to the tire shop..) never even made it to the water that day... Now I have ordered the two other tires.....

Most my mishaps happen before I even get to the water, by that time I am usually so ticked off I dont go or I am so overly cautious I catch myself before I do anything really stupid.......

 

[filthy]

Re: What boating mistakes have you made?

yup yup done all the obvious ones besides the key thing, first boat i bought was a 14ft savage ski boat kinda thing that cost 900 bucks with a 35 hp chrysler hangin off the back. They really should stick to cars! first three times i went out i paddled that thing back in, All for different reasons too! lucky it sat low and i had good paddles, still a hit to the ego tho, always took forever to start and if ya got it started it seemed fine until the battery went dead, then when pull started the bloody thing would run backwards! that always made for fun back at the dock! My favourite one was taking my dads little 12ft tinny out and just as I pulled in to the service station to fuel up everything one wheel just fell off the trailer! yep no fishin that day. Please keep these stories coming I love em especially the one where the guy put 25 gallons in to the rod holder!

And its true if ya aint breakin s@#t Ya aint tryin hard enough!

 

[jlongsta]

Re: What boating mistakes have you made?

OK, it's a good thing my husband and I didn't buy an airplane. We took our 21' pontoon out for the first time this season. My huband backed the trailer down to the boat ramp just fine, boat started just fine, I backed off the trailer just fine. We got out in the middle of the lake and everything was "Just Fine" until my husband noticed the gas gauge. It was on empty. We store our boat in a "secure" storage area and we stored it with a full tank of gas with stablizer. I flicked the gas gauge hoping it would shoot up to full. No luck. In a matter of minutes, I felt the boat lose power. We were dead in the water. We didn't have our trolling motor because we thought we would just troll along the dam this first trip out. A woman stopped and took my husband into the marina. She said she couldn't tow us in. Back comes my hubby with some gas and into the marina we go. $200 later, at $4.50 per gal., we were back on the lake. These are desparate times. Come to find out, one of the other tenants in our storage area was caught stealing gas and other items. It would have been nice had the storage people contacted us. The thief was even nice enough to replace the gas cap so we didn't notice anything strange. As I said, it's a good thing we have a boat and not an airplane. Lesson learned, always check your fuel no matter what!

 

[Water_God32]

Re: What boating mistakes have you made?

Winterized the boat wrong.
Took it out the next spring.
Crack in the block.
Engine caught fire. :facepalm:
Thank goodness for fire extinguishers!

 

[sutor623]

Re: What boating mistakes have you made?

guy put 25 gallons in to the rod holder!

Don't think I would have admitted to that one....

 

[CoffeeHound]

Re: What boating mistakes have you made?

Don't think I would have admitted to that one....

With 60+ years of boating -- I do NOT admit to any mistakes if there is no one around to see it happen .

 

[Mel Taylor]

Re: What boating mistakes have you made?

With 60+ years of boating -- I do NOT admit to any mistakes if there is no one around to see it happen .

A mistake is only a mistake if someone else is there to see it or, if the consequences are so apparent that you can't hide it or blame it on someone else. Otherwise it never happened.

 

[sutor623]

Re: What boating mistakes have you made?

With 60+ years of boating -- I do NOT admit to any mistakes if there is no one around to see it happen .

Hahaha.

 

[tomdinwv]

Re: What boating mistakes have you made?

I make no mistakes. I just teach those around me what not to do.

Okay, I did make one boo boo with the tow vehicle I used to have. It was an '04 Dodge Dakota. It didn't have any tie downs in the bed and I had hauled something and used a ratchet strap hooked on the front of the bed to hold said item in place. I was going down the road running about 50 or 55 when all of a sudden, WHAM, THUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMP. Pulled off the side of the road and found the problem. The end of the strap (without the ratchet) had slid down and got into the driveshaft. It looped itself around the driveshaft and proceeded to beat the snot out of everything underneath the truck. On a side note, the big Wham sound was the ratched hitting the back of the cab about 1" below the back glass, leaving one heck of a nice dent. After the ratchet end had made its way down to the driveshaft, it decided it hated my muffler. I could not have beat a better dent in the muffler with a 12lb sledge hammer. The ratchet strap also managed to rip the wiring out of the speed sensor in the rear end housing and it shredded the input shaft seal in the differencial. I cut the strap off the driveshaft and limped on home. Changed my underwear and proceeded to replace the seal and repair the wiring. On a side note, I always make sure all straps, ropes etc... are secured before taking off now, weather it's my truck, boat or anything else.

 

[cgibbo308]

Re: What boating mistakes have you made?

OK...
My first mistake SO far..
Launched without checking the gear function (78 evinrude)
shot her in gear and as i un hooked from the trailer she left without me.
i jumped on and realised i had no gear selection..

after 4 weeks i got the control box open and could find nothing wrong
put it back together and it worked fine...

it did however force me to cut the screw posts of and build them up and fix the dead screws tho
so from now on, i will be checking everything b4 unhooking

 

[jb_wi]

Re: What boating mistakes have you made?

I went fishing with 2 friends of mine and their Dad about 12 years ago. We were going out on a local lake to give his pontoon boat it's maiden voyage.

We got to the ramp, and their Dad (Jim) backed the boat down into the water...we gave him the ol "GOOOOD", so he put the truck in park and got out to watch us push the pontoon into the water. Well, my buddies and I unhook the rope and safety chain from the pontoon, and start trying to push it in. It absolutely wouldn't budge. We tried pushing harder and all it did was rock the entire rig including the truck.

Ok, time to regroup..all the while their Dad is muttering.."I knew the trailer wasn't backed in far enough". So, he get's in the truck, and backs in farther until the rear wheels of the truck are now up to the center hub in the lake. "Alright, push her off boys" he says. So the three of us start pushing again...to no avail. As we're all standing there scratching ours heads, I walk up on the dock to get a birds eye view of the situation. I'm standing there looking down into the murky water, then see something which required a closer look. I kneeled down off of the edge of the dock and peer down into the water, and say.."Uh, Jim, the trailer tires are not touching the ramp..the pontoon is floating and holding the trailer up with it.

So he jumps in the truck and pulls the pontoon back out of the lake and we start trying to figure out why the pontoon was stuck to the trailer...then we hear Jim say, "Ahhhhhhhh sh-t". We gather round to see what he's looking at...

He had installed a new depth finder on the pontoon earlier that week, and guess he decided to use 4 inch screws to do it. He had sucessfully screwed the pontoon deck to the trailer boards. We still razz him about that one to this day.

 

[dstom]

Re: What boating mistakes have you made?

What? You have not done a dry launch yet?

What about the perennial favorite- Forgetting to install the drain plug when launching?

Boy, do you have a lot of experiences to look forward to!

Remember- good boating and good attitude go together.

 

[Shortbuss]

Re: What boating mistakes have you made?

I had my first boat out a week ago and luckily read all 11 pages. It was a bit of a gong show for me and my wife but she has had a boat before so she was good at loading and unloading the boat. I read almost all the answers on here carefully do I don't make he same mistakes lol.

 

[moosehead]

Re: What boating mistakes have you made?

May as well make the Noob's first forum post in this thread.

All from first owned boat below. New ones haven't had much to talk about, yet.

- forgot drain plug reinstall at launch
- left boat keys and stored winter battery at home (20 mile drive)
- left Grandma and kids onboard when retrieving craft in trailer, kids do it all the time, not easy on an 85-year old lady
- keelguard install wasn't exactly straight
- almost deposited plastic tube from fogging can into engine block (best tip ever to tape it to can)
- left boarding ladder out multiple times
- forgot to reattach stern straps to trailer, discovered at home
- fallen overboard while in berth multiple times

Our 8-year old daughter cristened her "Oops", and it stuck.

In all, I can live with the above and can hope it doesn't go too far beyond that.

Cheers.

 

[AZBoatDreamer]

Re: What boating mistakes have you made?

Thanks for all the replies and keeping this thread going.

I have a new one to add.

I lower my out drive while the boat sits in storage.

I forgot to raise it when I took the boat home from storage.

I didn't see any scraps so I will add raise out drive on my check list.


Take care.

 

[ssmith36]

Re: What boating mistakes have you made?

I used to be a SeaDoo PWC Technician for a small local dealership. One of the perks of the job was to take things to the lake after repairing them for "test drives". Yea I was "on the clock" to play. After doing a top end job on an 800 XP I headed to the local lake for a test run with the other tech. Started up great on the trailer, water from the p hole and away we went. About 300 yards from the ramp I noticed the nose coming up which was a little odd. And at the same time it "clicked" with me what was happening the temp alarm went off. Shutting it down immediately we both hopped in the water as I took the seat off.. yep the engine compartment was filling with water..... I forgot to hook the cooling hoses up from the impeller housing. Same as leaving the plug out. Damn what a long swim back that was since the electronics were underwater and wouldn't start or safe to run anyway.

Lesson learned the hard way on that one, no damage to the engine thankfully and we all including the customer had a good laugh about it.

 

[AZBoatDreamer]

Re: What boating mistakes have you made?

A couple of new ones for me today.

Spent 20 minutes trying to hitch up to the wrong trailer hitch. I have a travel trailer and the TT Hitch was on the truck has a larger hitch ball than the boat hitch. Switch to the Boat hitch and what do you know the boat trailer tongue went on without a problem.

My son 9yr and I just launched the boat without the safety rope with latch installed. I backed the boat into the water with him in it and the boat started moving backwards as the boat winch strap was un reeling. LOL he was going without me. Luckly the strap was connected to the boat so he wasnt going far. So the boat bow was near the end of the trailer and I was still in the truck. First time him and I alone at the lake. Lesson learn do not remove the safety rope until Im on the boat.

Boating with myself and son was a first without wife and other kids. Overall it went well and we had a good time.

 

[bwachob]

Re: What boating mistakes have you made?

Can't believe I have one that I didn't see. Went up to the local lake, pulled up to ramp, installed plug and removed trnsom straps. Back boat into water and floats off trailer to end of launch rope. All is well at this point. Park truck, get in boat and leave dock. Idle to open water and hit throttle. Feels like I hit a stump, everything feels good so go ahead go fishing for a few hours. Get back to dock, load up no problems. Go to put on transom saver and cant find it in back of truck. That stump was the transom saver popping off engine.

 

[msaunoras]

Re: What boating mistakes have you made?

Lets see here. I've had this boat for about 7 years and it's only been dumped on the ramp once right after I had skids put on the trailier bumpers. After that one I never unhook the winch hook until the rear is in the water. I did have the motor all the way up because I sensed impending doom. (steep launch and a wee little tap of the brakes was all it took).

I once ran it up on a gravel bar and dinged up a prop. It was repairable though and serves as my spare.

I'll admit I was running too fast back to the launch after dark one night and maybe "scared" some canoers that didn't have any lights on. That was a mutual mistake, I apologized later at the launch and they agreed they shouldn't have been out there.

another good mistake I made when I was younger I hit a baseball right into my dad's depth finder transducer on the back of his boat breaking it off :facepalm: