A Prius Moment Aboard Our 300DA

[Stray Cat]

What a hell of a feeling...I throttled up to get on plane, started to pull back to settle in to cruise, and the boat starts to roll to port. I looked at my sync gauge, port was at 3500 and stbd was still churning at 3850 rpm. I pulled the stbd lever back to neutral, and it remained at 3850. I brought the port engine back up to 3850 to think about things for a bit.

I decided to shut down the stbd engine, while I pulled the port engine down to 1100 rpm rather quickly. There was a pretty big wall of water suddenly coming toward the swim platform so sped the boat up to minimize the backwash.

After inspecting the cable at the engine, I was able to pull it forward so it would idle and I could use it to get back in the slip using 2 drives vs. 1

After inspecting the cable at the controller, the crimp on the cable end broke and allowed the throttle to advance, but when I pulled the throttle toward neutral, the cable jacket moved away from the controller not allowing any change.

Lesson learned: cables that crap out don't allow the throttle to fail to idle speed. I am thankful this didn't happen during a crowded docking situation.

 

[HUMPH]

That's good that you were able to work it out! It's a good thing you were handy enough to take care of it without having to dock on one engine!

 

[Iprof]

I hope your set-up is not like mine, back in the 80's Sea Ray only put one power steering pump on their twins, on the starboard side. Docking a large boat with no power steering and no counter rotating drive is a very nasty experience.

Glad you made in in without doing any damage or playing bumper cars.


Ken

 

[Rxflyer]

Yup, there's still a single PS pump. On the stbd engine. Learned about that my 2nd time out solo when the IAC croaked and I got to do a single-engine approach without power steering.