peterkvs
Active Member
Was cruising home yesterday after going out for a nice cruise and lunch with my youngest daughter. A couple of miles from my slip and I run the engines up to full power. I like to see that I can achieve better than 2800 rpm and 28 kts and that all the operating parameters are normal. Was just up to 2850 rpm and there was a giant explosion which shook the boat, a shudder and maybe even rocked the boat to the starboard. It happened so fast. My first thought was that I had detonated an engine. I slowed to idle, which takes a while because I had the synchronizer on. I checked over the panel at idle and everything was normal. I came out of gear and opened the hatch and checked everything out. Everything looked normal. I could very easily spin the prop shafts by hand. Tried the gears in forward and reverse and all seemed normal. Put boat back into forward and look it up to 2200 rpm on plane. Made 20 kts, which is typical but noticed that the railing on the bow and the fenders baskets were shaking pretty hard. They did not shake before the event. I put each engine in drive separately and took them up to 2000 rpm with no real noticeable vibration on either drive, then took it back to 2200 and noticed the pretty bad vibration. I cruised back to the dock at 1200 rpm, pumped out and returned to the slip. While I was parking I noticed that when I engaged the port drive in either forward or reverse there was a slight singing noise. This does not occur with the port engine, and it stops as soon as I take it out of gear.
I am assuming that I hit some underwater debris, like a tree or log. I was in the center of a wide channel on the Tennessee River in about 50 ft of water. I have never hit anything before and was hope some with experience might chime in and let me know how to proceed?
I can call a diver to inspect and/or I can take it to a nearby marina where they can haul it out and inspect. I hate to haul it right now because I would have to winterize it as it has been freezing almost every night and some days. What is the likelihood that I did something worse than bending the prop? Could I have bent a rudder, strut, prop shaft? Would the shafts still easily turn by hand if I had bent something? How far to I let the inspection go? Just try props first? Seeing that it costs $400 to pull the boat I don't want to do that too many times.
Thanks in advance,
Pete
I am assuming that I hit some underwater debris, like a tree or log. I was in the center of a wide channel on the Tennessee River in about 50 ft of water. I have never hit anything before and was hope some with experience might chime in and let me know how to proceed?
I can call a diver to inspect and/or I can take it to a nearby marina where they can haul it out and inspect. I hate to haul it right now because I would have to winterize it as it has been freezing almost every night and some days. What is the likelihood that I did something worse than bending the prop? Could I have bent a rudder, strut, prop shaft? Would the shafts still easily turn by hand if I had bent something? How far to I let the inspection go? Just try props first? Seeing that it costs $400 to pull the boat I don't want to do that too many times.
Thanks in advance,
Pete