Ski Nautique 200 no power to dashboard and buttons - cannot start boat.

[Jørgen]

Hello everyone,

Quick intro: I am a part of a skiing club and a few days ago when I got there, the boat wouldn't start and there was quite a bit of water in the hull. The battery was dead I believe. I drained the water manually and tried with another smaller battery. No luck starting the boat. The battery has been charged for today but the same thing happens.

Problem no.1:
If I turn the master switch, there is a click from the motor somewhere (relay I would imagine) and the zero off control turns on with its small intro video before it turns off. There is no response from the display and buttons on the dashboard, so I cannot punch in the code and try to start the boat or the bilge pump.

I tried looking under the dashboard and tried disconnecting and reconnecting some wires from the connector-block but I have no idea what I am looking at with the wiring. I tried taking the board with the master switch out and look if there was something behind there. I was looking for fuses, but not sure where they are, if there is any. After looking a bit more online just now: are the red "buttons/dots" circuit breakers - and do you have to push them really hard? I didn't want to risk destroying anything.

Are there wiring in the hull that could have been flooded and causing a short circuit?

I do not know much about motors or boats, so could really use some good ideas on where to look. If you know about some good documentation of wiring etc., that would also be appreciated.

- Secondly, I am pretty sure the original cause of problems is way too much water entering by the drive shaft, it's running pretty fast instead of occational drips. I saw a video on youtube about tightening the seal, so I am gonna try that.

I believe it is a Ski Nautique 200 CB, 2015.

Best Regards
Jørgen

[bturner]

Sounds like your club is doing a bang up job maintaining that expensive boat. So besides the snarky comment here's some suggestions to see if you can move forward a bit more....

1. Verify the battery is good. If the battery was run completely dead it may be perished. Just because it was on the charger overnight doesn't mean it's charged or doesn't have deeper issues. I see you're in Denmark so I have no idea what auto parts stores are like there but if you were in the states I would tell you to pull the battery, take it to your local auto parts store and have them load test it. It's very possible to have a battery that will read charged, show 12+ volts and have a dead cell that will prevent the battery from delivering the amperage needed to run the boat.
2. Square away the boat. Nothing worse than working on a boat full of water. If it were me I would get it back on the trailer, drained of water, moved to somewhere I could let it dry out and work on the boat without taking a bath while doing so. This would also be a good time to clean up the boat and while doing so inspect all the cables/connections along the way. You'd be surprised what you can find in the process.
3. Low hanging fruit. When presented with an issue I like to go after the stupid stuff first. First is verifying the condition of the battery (covered in item 1), then moving on to the cable/cable connections, the safety lanyard/switch, the start circuit breakers on the panel and the breaker on the engine. Depending on just how much water you allowed to get in the boat it is possible that the bilge was/is full and the starter is or was under water. This would not be a good thing and could be tripping a breaker as well. If the boat even got close to this level I would be looking real close at the starter and would also look closely at both the ground cable on the block, the connection to the starter and the general condition of the starter as well.

Hopefully you're in fresh water as having that much saltwater in the boat will multiple your issues.

Moving on to the shaft seal..... I could really be off here and hopefully someone will set me straight here if I am but by 2015 all tier 1 ski boats I'm aware of were using dripless shaft seals, at least the MasterCrafts were. If you're seeing anything coming from a dripless seal this will need to be addressed. Chances are the seal surfaces are contaminated, out of adjustment or damaged. You should not be getting any water dripping with either a properly adjusted stuffing box or dripless seal when the boat is sitting at rest if either are working correctly and have been properly maintained. To service either of these components you'll need to have the boat out of the water either on a lift or back on the trailer.

Sounds like it may be time to do some bonding with the boat and show it some love.....

[Nautiquehunter]

Check the bilge pump only toggle switch.

[Jørgen]

Thanks for the ideas. We definitely have a deficiency in the technical department, so will indeed have to get to know the boat better in that department