Aug
The year was 1996 and my wife knew I loved fishing, and she let me buy a new and rather expensive boat. It was a 172 Sportfish SCOUT boat with 115 HP engine. It was my first fully outfitted boat. Prior to that, I had owned much smaller boats without all of the bells and whistles. Scout boats are built similarly to Boston Whaler boats, in that they are virtually unsinkable (lots of flotation in the hull of the boat).
Since I was going to be fishing in the marshes and the coast of Louisiana with my son, my wife and I wanted a "good boat" with everything I needed to get back home safely.
The first day I got the boat I was so excited I had to go fishing. I had already loaded my fishing gear into my truck and picked up the boat from the dealership and had previously told them I was headed to Port Sulphur, Louisiana to go fishing. I had already paid the bill, so they wished me well and off I went.
There is some fantastic fishing in coastal Louisiana. I was pretty much a novice when it came to boats, having only owned the simplest of boats. Not only that but I was naïve about the responsibility of boat dealers. After all, I had told the boat dealer that I was going fishing that day. Now this boat had just about every feature known to man. It was the boat of my dreams.
I had decided to take the boat out by myself so that I could concentrate on learning all of the features of the boat and make sure I could handle it safely. I knew enough about boats to know that you must be careful with them and that the 115-horsepower Evinrude Ocean Pro engine was plenty of power for this particular boat as they normally came equipped with much smaller engines.
The boat had more switches and lights than anything I had ever owned and the dealership didn’t spend any time with me discussing how they worked but I have always been confident (and naïve) in trying something new. My truck was a new Tacoma Pre-Runner 6 cylinder, but it had just the right amount of horsepower to tow the boat and trailer. The boat was relatively heavy, but I got used to towing the boat in the one-hour trip to the boat launch and was kind of concerned about being able to avoid hitting someone while trailering the boat to the boat launch, but everything went well. I kept my speed down well below the speed limit and just tried to get the “feel” of it all.
It was almost 10:00 am and most fishermen know that you want to get out early in the morning if you want to catch fish. This was going to be a learning trip, so I didn’t care about the time but was excited to get the boat in the water as soon as possible. There weren’t many people at the launch, and I paid my launch fee. This particular launch had a back-down ramp. Prior to Hurricane Katrina, some boat launches had boat hoists that would lift your boat into the water. Many of those types of boat hoist/launches were destroyed in Hurricane Katrina. The cool thing about those boat hoist launches was that the boat wheel bearings on the trailer never dipped into the saltwater so you didn’t have to be concerned about the bearings rusting over time. If you used a back-down ramp, you had to be sure to grease the bearings on every trip.
Now backing up a large boat into a narrow boat launch lane isn’t the most difficult thing in the world to do, but at first it can get a little tricky because when you are first learning how to back the boat up, most people turn the steering wheel of the towing vehicle the opposite direction that is needed to steer the boat and trailer into the narrow boat launch lane. But before you drop the boat into the water, you must disconnect a few different safety features that hold the boat onto the trailer while you are driving down the highway. Lots of thoughts were flooding my brain, including the fact that the few people at the boat launch had to be chuckling about my back-down skills but I soldiered on. I disconnected the boat winch connection and the rear clamps that hold the boat tight to the back of the trailer.
Since I was launching the boat by myself, I had to tie another rope between the boat and the trailer to keep it from just sailing off the trailer into the water unsecured. I connected the boat rope to the trailer and had already determined the rather long rope was ample for the job. After I struggled to back the trailer down the ramp and not hit anyone in the process, my mind was still racing. This was my first maiden voyage with this new boat and the excitement was immense. The boat slid off the trailer without incident. The boat rope connected to the boat and trailer remained secured and I climbed out of my truck to remove the rope from the trailer and tie the boat to the dock. About now, I am on top of the world. Everything was going fine. I didn’t need any help from anyone to launch my new boat and was feeling pretty good about myself. As the boat turned to the side with the wind blowing, I noticed a cylinder of water coming out of the side of the boat. The stream of water looked like that which would come out of a garden hose and in that moment of astonishment I couldn’t understand what was happening. I had never seen water spew out of the side of any boat before. I looked at the launch man, an older gentleman with that WTH look on my face and he replied, “Did you put the drain plug in?” I must have turned 7 shades of red. With all of my thoughts racing through my brain, I had just assumed that the dealership had installed the drain plug since I was going fishing. (Never assume anything is the best rule for operating a boat.) Anyway, I now realize that there is no drain plug in the boat and my treasured new boat might sink. I hoped and prayed that what I had read about the Scout Boats was true as I frantically reconnected the boat to the trailer and pulled it out of the launch bay. I get the boat up on the concrete pad and water is still pumping furiously out of the side of the boat. I mean, the water coming out of the side of the boat looked like the water being shot out of a fire hose. I stood there astonished and embarrassed about this faux pas and started figuring out where all that water was coming from. You see, on many boats, there is a drain plug that is on the transom of the boat which allows you to remove water that sometimes collect in the bilge. This boat was equipped with an automatic bilge pump and so when the water level inside of the bilge at the bottom of the boat becomes dangerously deep, the electric bilge pump will pump the water out of the bilge area. The bilge area is the bottommost interior part of a boat and water that seeps or leaks in, collects there, and becomes stagnant and dirty can be pumped out with the bilge pump. Because the drain plug had not been installed, water had poured into the bilge area of the boat. Thank goodness for the excellent floatation quality built into the Scout boat.
It took an incredibly long time for the water to fully drain from the boat and that gave me plenty of time to find the drain plug and install it. I’ve been told that this has happened to other people and while it might not be uncommon, it is a lesson that I will never forget. The rest of the boat trip went well, and the rest is history. 21 years later the boat and motor are still working well, thanks to my expert boat mechanic Tommy Wibel, who maintains and repairs my 115-horsepower Evinrude engine when it gives trouble. Thanks to Tall Paul (Paul Koeppel) who introduced me to Tommy. He is the best boat mechanic I have ever dealt with.
JoeyA
08-20-17
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