Biggest Mistake You've Made With Your Boat ?

[Laptom]

Alright... Not with the boat itself, but...

At a holiday trip enjoying the sunshine in the boat after a wakeboard set. When somebody said that he/she would enjoy something cold. So starting up the boat and cruising back to the dock at 35mph. When arriving at the dock I realized that I left the wakeboard on the swimplatform.... Looking and it was ofcourse gone. We spend 4hours (that is a whole tank of fuel of a '88 Barefoot) looking on a lake of 10x2miles... When we gave up and cruising back to the petrol station we saw it flooting with the bindings pointing down!

[OHLNautique]

I sold my boat (78' Ski Tique) to a buddy who did some "fixing" on it. He calls me up and we take the boat out to see how she runs. I drive the boat off the trailer, he jumps in and we motor out under the bridge and into the lake when I notice the temp guage is pegged, I tell him and he goes white, he yells "get to shore, fast"

I end up beaching the boat in someones back yard and feel water all around my feet.

Turns out he disconnect the hose from the through hull when he was "fixing" the boat and he never hooked it back up. Almost seized the engine AND sank it!

Did the same thing in my old Nautique, minus the beaching. First trip out in the spring, notice the temp going up fast and immediately realized what I had done. Jerked open the engine cover and fished around in the bilge pool until I got the hose back on the intake. Scared the crap out of me.

[AuMDLST]

Wife just reminded me of the time I neglected to secure the kids wake boards in the rack - had one come out under way and narrowly miss one of the kids (thankfully) but put a good size gash in the vinyl.

[WakeSlayer]

All this was on my first Nautique in the mid 90's.

I did the anchor trick once. Luckily after one bounce, the crappy rope I had on it snapped, rather than launch it into us. Seriously dangerous.
I also was attempting to mount a net under the gunnel on my 90 SN. Thinking there was more than just the side of the boat under there, I was drilling a pilot hole for the little screws to go in. Well, there wasn't. I had to get a nice Nautique decal and place it over the hole through the side.

The other stupid thing I did, that really wasn't me, was let an inexperienced friend drive my boat around while some others and I installed a dock. Told him to stay away from shore, etc. Well, he had to show everyone he was the man in the sweet ski boat, and ran it hard and fast near the launch. Hit a pile of rocks and annhilated the bottom hardware. I had only had the boat a month.

[Hollywood]

Told him to stay away from shore, etc. Well, he had to show everyone he was the man in the sweet ski boat, and ran it hard and fast near the launch. Hit a pile of rocks and annhilated the bottom hardware. I had only had the boat a month.

^^favorite story so far.

Tossed the Skylon out of the boat and as the cable slithered along with it the crimped eye on the end took a chunk out of the gel on the deck.

Ran premium fuel/93 octane a few summers, what a waste.

My worst: I dropped keys in the lake once (see Quinner's post).

[Teleman]

Wow I feel better.....This must be how AA works. Lesson #1... Don't ask your 17 year old nephew and his 14 year old brother to, "Take the boat about a mile to the launch (by themselves), while I bring the truck and trailer over". After paying the fine for, "Excessive use of powere, traveling too close to shore, boating within a swim area, and all the phone calls from the POed neighbors. This should go down as the "Things-not-to-do" award of the year award. Fortunatly, no one hurt.

[gride300]

i left my 08 ibex/one boots on the platform at dusk and didnt realize it was gone until we were done flushing and cleaning the boat. luckily some nice neighbors put it on their porch. i've also not put the plug in on my old MC, but sit's it's in the floor its no big deal. also, my buddy's brand new 210..winter time and i was pulling him on our river that i know blindfolded and hit a 25' long submerged log and f'd the prop. it sucked.

[Chris4x4Gill2]

no miscues on the nautique yet (knock on wood) but in my old hunting/fishing boat I had a doozy.

Me and a buddy were going duck hunting up a creek, we hunted this area regularly and fished it as well. Going upstream before daylight pushing it a little to make up some time and hit a submerged log with the outboard. Checked the prop and everything seemed fine, got to our spot and beached the boat and went hunting. Came back 4-5 hours later and the back end of the boat is under water. When I hit the log it cracked the transom right below the water line. We turned on the bilge, and started bailing with a bucket. once the water was out was hauled @$$ back to the boat ramp and onto the trailer.

SHe's still sitting back behind the barn since repairs are much more than we paid for the boat.

[dizzyj]

I've done the plug thing, although it wasnt entirely my fault. I have a method when I put my boat on the lift. I take off the center cover,take the plug out and leave it sitting on top of the cover. Well, a buddy went down to get something out of my boat and he put the cover on without putting the plug in.

So next time I drop the boat in the water I think "oh hey, I left the plug in" and didnt double check. I always double check now. luckilly I wasnt far from the dock.

recently we were filling another friends boat's ballast system. We were tied up to my dock checking something out. We look down at the ski locker (96 ssn) and its bulging! manage to open the locker and water comes puring out. Whomever installed the center ballast system not only didnt add a vent line to the bag, but hooked the aerator pump directly to the through hole with no saftey valve. The bag overfilled, ripped the pump off the bottom of the hull and burst the fat sack.

Took a while for the bilge and my 2 tsunamis to drain the compartment enough to realize that there is now a hole in the bottom of the boat. Just in case you ever need to plug something like that, one of thoes squeeze lime bottles works wonderfully! keep friends who drink mexican beers around lol

[TravisFling]

I've had a few myself...
Usually only trailer about a mile at 25mph to my home launch, so I leave the board in the racks. Got home from a big trip to Cumberland and I put my wakeboard back in the rack at home, drove to the launch and the wakeboard came out and fell on the street.
Installing my new impellar this year, my buddy put the pump housing on backwards, sucking all the water out of the engine. That was nice paddling the Nautique back to launch, thankfully we weren't out of the no-wake zone yet.

Someone wanted to do a power turn, so I told everyone to hold on really, really tightly, etc., and walked them through what would happen and forgot the lady in the back had about a 64 ounce margarita, that promply went all over her husband sitting next to her at 3 G's.
Also had a buddy throw me my keys from on top of the houseboat, and they promptly sank with a floatie on them, along with my sunglasses immediately thereafter.

[Andrew]

oh yeah, dunno how i forgot about this one..... A former friend of my little sister's offered to let me keep the boat in an empty bay at his lake house (since i was gonna be on the lake all day everyday that week.) There was only one slip with a lift and naturally his boat stayed on the lift. I figured that I'd be just fine to leave the auto bilge pump on and didn't give it a second thought. The morning of day 3, I arrive to find about 2" of water covering the floor! Of course the first thing i did was attempt to open the engine cover and inspect the pump.... NEWSFLASH! 2" of water creates ALOT of suction! I didn't think I'd ever get the cover open... I eventually had to tie a rope to the handle, throw it over the rafters, and then bounce on it until i could break the seal. After I got the cover open I raised the boat up on his lift, drained the water, and towed it back to the boat ramp with another friend's sea-doo (to avoid damaging the engine while the oil pan was filled with water). After further inspection, I discovered that the power and ground wires had been ripped out of the pump. The pump was not near any moving parts, so all I can figure is a human stepped in somewhere......... Turns out this "friend" of my sister's is quite a twit with some serious anger-management issues. Needless to say, my boat hasn't been back at his boat house!

[jc]

Biggest mistake...

My wife and her girlfriend were in my 216 parked in between the turn balls on our course, I anchored them there so they could have a view of us running down the course behind my brothers 196. As we entered the course she panicked and decided the boat was too close to the action so she fired it up and drove directly across the course with anchor in tow - it is a cable course so as I rounded ball 1 the buoy started moving away and under the water. My bro cut throttle and got out of the course, we just kind of sat there and tried to figure out what just happened. Total carnage, pipes and cable pointing out of the water, it took a while to get it all figured out, and for me to talk to her again.

[Cadesun]

RE: Biggest mistake...

Last summer: let a buddy drive in between sets while I ate... he ended up beaching it up on a gravel bar while my head was in a bag of cheetos. Killed the prop but everything else was fine.

This year: pulling the boat home after the season and forgot to maintenace my trailer... fried a bearing and took the axle with it. $1500 later I have a brand new axle and bearings!

[myrtlebeachrider]

One early afternoon from work we were trying to get to the river. I backed up to my 05 210 in my garage like I had 100 times before. This time I stopped at the exact spot where the hinged trailor tongue would swing into place exactly over my hitch. I proceeded to hook everything except the hinge pin! I pulled out of my driveway and down our street and into 5 o'clock traffic. In the turn onto the main road and notice the front of the boat was very low and bouncing. I hit the brakes, the boat hits the right rear of my truck and continues to pass us in the 2 right hand lanes. 200 yds later the trailor hits the curb about 20 ft from the gas pumps and the boat stands up on the trailor to proclaim that curb belonged to a Nautique! $11,000 and 4 months later I get it back. 2 hours in to our 1st session since the accident I landed weird on a 360 and broke my tib/fib 7 times. That was 2 years ago and everything has been great since then!!!

[Cam003]

Before we had our SANTE, we locked the keys in the truck on the ramp with the engine running. Finally got it open using the antenna on the power lock button. Lesson learned when backing the boat down the ramp all windows must stay down.