My most memorable one...
We used to go on week-long houseboat trips to Lake Powell every 2-3 years. The houseboats are slow, so a typical 6 night trip for us has us motor up the lake, find a beach for the night, motor further up the lake, find a beach for the night, motor further up the lake, find a nice beach for the next two nights, then start working our way back. When we are moving beaches, we'll usually tow our power boat part way, then send it out to scout for beach spots ahead of the houseboat. When the HB catches up, we'll beach the power boat, help beach and tie up the HB, then eventually tie the power boat off on the back of the houseboat.
First trip to Powell with our 2003 Tige 22v we did the same thing. I think it was our second afternoon. Beached the houseboat, got it secured, then everyone wanted to play, so instead of tying up the Tige, we took it out to do some tubing. After a little while I noticed it was getting very sluggish pulling out of corners and trying to accelerate, so I stopped and opened up the engine hatch and was greeted with about a foot of water in the bilge, which is a metric sh** ton for a lower profile wakeboard boat. Looked over the side, expecting to see the bilge pump doing it's thing...no water coming out. The light on the helm was on, but no water coming out. Fantastic. Thinking the obvious, I jumped in the water to check the drain plug, thinking it had somehow worked it's way loose and fallen out. Nope, drain plug is still in and tight. Great, there's a hole in the boat but I have no idea where. We hadn't hit anything so I was completely baffled. Got back in, fired her up and headed straight back to camp (still towing some confused people on a tube) and beached the boat so we didn't sink.
Fortunately, this particular trip we had another guy with us who also had a wakeboard boat, and he had 3 portable submersible pumps to fill and drain his ballast sacks, so we got them all down in the bilge and started pumping. They were able to stay ahead of the inflow and eventually sucked the bilge dry enough that we could see water flowing into the bilge from somewhere further forward. The boat was built with a floor panel that could be removed to access the fuel tank, so we got the tools out and started pulling screws and bolts and got the panel out of the way. With the fuel tank exposed, we saw water running toward the bilge from under the aft end of the fuel tank, but it was dry in front, so at that point we had the location narrowed down.
Since the pumps were staying ahead of the water, we refloated the boat and I started swimming underneath it feeling for anything that didn't seem right. Got to the 3 tracking fins on the keel, and...there were supposed to be 3 anyway. The center one had departed, leaving four 3/8" open bolt holes through the hull. Fantastic. We have a boat with holes in it. We were about a 30-45 minute boat ride away from the marina, so we did what any reasonable group of people would do and went for it. There were 3 of us in the Tige (me driving, 2 others manning the pumps), and another friend followed us in his boat just in case we ran into trouble.
Lake Powell has some tour boats that cruise up and down the lake, from Wahweap Marina up to Rainbow Bridge. Those things are pretty decent size and move fast, creating giant roller wakes behind them.
Apparently several people each year are injured by these wakes. We came up behind one of them on our way back to the marina. I followed inside his wake for awhile until I got to the point I was ready to pass. Cut out to his starboard, went over the first small roller, adjusted speed, went over the second one, misjudged my speed, and went
through the third one. So now we have a boat with holes in it, in the middle of a lake that is probably close to 200 feet deep at that particular point, that I just submarined the boat. Nice. Fortunately, our speed and angle of entry was such that the boat sort of tunneled through the wake, and the majority of the water went over us. The bimini top was up at the time, front straps ripped off the top and it fell backwards (never did fit quite right after that). I stayed mostly dry tucked behind the windshield, the two guys sitting on the back seat got a wall of water to the face, and we ended up with maybe 2 inches of standing water on the deck. Stopped the boat, did a systems check to make sure that all of my passengers were still on board, all of our appendages were still intact, and that the water pumps were still working, got laughed at by the friend following us, and went on our way.
In the end we were able to make it back to the ramp and trailer the boat. We found an open parts department at the marina, found some bolts to put through the holes and some marine sealant to waterproof it. Putting the nuts on the inner hull side of the bolt required lifting the fuel tank a bit and squeezing down in there. Turns out that none of the tracking fin bolts were secured on the inner hull side, someone had just threaded them into the hull, put some sealant on them, and called it good. Yikes!! We put everything back together and relaunched the boat and had a great rest of the trip. I mentioned the whole beaching situation at the beginning of this story because while we were gone, someone else back at our camp ended up finding the missing tracking fin in the location we were beached while tending to the houseboat. Only thing I could figure is that the fins were buried in the sand, and the side-to-side motion from the waves hitting the shore worked the center one loose to the point where it fell off.
Lake Powell makes for some great stories
, car and boat still on trailer are now floating, as car sinks my Mom told me to jump in and get her purse out of car before it went under, which it did
