Ran aground... boat stopped like I had breaks! :-(

[gnealon]

OK... I don't even want to post it here because i'm embarassed but i know i would get some good advice so just sucking it up. :smt009

Just got my 2005 280DA and decided to go out w/ a few buddies Friday night to Hemlock Cove. (this is Long Island Sound outside Babylon area). I was in the Babylon cut... very narrow... trying to find the buoy's on the GPS and by eye but wasn't very successful. My friends (pretty experienced boaters in that area) were confused by my GPS as well ( mention more later about that). I think I cut a piece of land too close on a turn and BAM... STOPPED SHORT! I think i my heart stopped for about 15 seconds when that happened. So... after calming down, we assessed the situation and it wasn't too bad. The bow was still floating but the stern wasn't. We let some slack out on my anchor... threw it as far as possible... and gradually pulled our way back into the channel. Started up... kept going. About 45 minutes later my starboard engine overheated. I figured i sucked up sand and broke my impeller since I was getting a 1.1 psi H20 reading on that engine. My port engine was showing about 35.

Anyways, we anchored and relaxed for a bit. Before we knew it, fog rolled in and we couldn't see 10 feet. Nice... this night is getting better and better. Like I said... embarrassed to admit all these mistakes but want to share my experiences. Since my GPS wasn't working that well, we decided to spend the night on the hook and wait for the fog to lift the next day. I drove home Sat. morning w/o over heating but still very low water pressure in starboard engine.

I now see oil leaking out the back of the boat :smt089 And my trim on the starboard out drive does not go as high as the port out drive. My gauges go from 0-10 on trim level. I can get port up to 10 and starboard up to 7. I was told by a buddy of mine I am either leaking oil from the trim (pump?.. can't remember) or the actual out drive gear box?!?!? Since its a decent amount of oil... and it still leaks when the trim is all the way down... i think it may be the gear box :smt089

Also... I am hoping that I actually didn't break the impeller but might just have some sand in the pressure sensor. I have to find out where that is and pull it. Idea's on that??

What did i learn?

1. Make sure the region on your GPS is correct... mine was set in the Boston area and the accuracy was horrible.

2. Check the freaking weather you IDIOT.

3. Go slower at night!

4. I need a hand held flash light to scan for buoy's. Its a lot easier then using the bow spot light.

5. I need a spare anchor. The one on the bow was a BIT*H to throw far! haha

Anyways, i would appreciate what anyone has to say about that oil leaking. I assume i need to get the boat out asap and get the out drive pressure tested. btw... forgot to mention... they are bravo III's.

Sorry for the long post... my heart is broken so go easy on me :smt009

 

[gnealon]

Sorry to hear about your incident. I'd get the boat pulled out and looked over before taking it out on the water again. Hard to say about the impeller, but you probably packed the water intakes on the drive with sand, and very well could have starved the impeller of water, which would fry it after a few minutes.

The oil leak is not a good omen, you must have tweeked one of the drives pretty good. Hopefully it is just the trim cylinder (I suspect it is) but you need to get it checked out quickly, because if you are getting water into the drive, it will not be long before it fails, and you know how much a bravo III costs.

Good luck, and sounds like you learned a lesson on the water, first of many more to come. The goal is never to repeat the same accident again. I can offer sympathy, as I had a recent crunch experience as well. Misery loves company eh?

http://clubsearay.com/forum/showthread.php?t=18234

Regards,
Scott

I read your post... sorry to hear that pal. I cringed when i read it. I am pulling the boat out of the water today to have it looked over. I am hoping its the trim cylinder as well. Someone told me that since its a decent amount of oil coming out... and its still leaking when the drive is down... that it doesn't look like its the trim cylinder. But lets cross our fingers that it is.

I certainly learned a lesson, and hope to God i don't repeat it!

 

[AKBASSKING]

I would agree with Scott and pull the boat, it is the ONLY way to make 100% sure the area is checked for damage.

Good luck and don't feel too bad most of us have run aground at one time or another. Sometimes on purpose.:smt021

As my Admiral always tells me "if you see sea gulls standing in the water and not floating it is probably TOO SHALLOW to run my boat through!! So I tried to scare them off the water just one time and she never lets me forget......:huh:

I guess I am just the hired help…..

 

[gnealon]

I would agree with Scott and pull the boat, it is the ONLY way to make 100% sure the area is checked for damage.

Good luck and don't feel too bad most of us have run aground at one time or another. Sometimes on purpose.:smt021

As my Admiral always tells me "if you see sea gulls standing in the water and not floating it is probably TOO SHALLOW to run my boat through!! So I tried to scare them off the water just one time and she never lets me forget......:huh:

I guess I am just the hired help…..

Thanks for making me feel better. I hate when I do stupid things and really beat myself up for it. Ohh... and thanks for the laugh about the sea gulls! That's classic. I learned that night how to spot shallow water by looking at the ripples on the water.

When i ran aground... i told my wife "We're here"

 

[skolbe]

Is your area sandy or muddy or rocky where you ran aground? How fast were you going? I suspect your impellers will need replacing and your thermostats. Plus you probably need to flush the motor out - hopefully it is a trim cylinder? Did you notice any vibration after the incident? Did you check your gear lube monitor bottles and you trim cylinder reservoir - are either low? You may need to touch up bottom paint as well.

 

[gnealon]

Is your area sandy or muddy or rocky where you ran aground? How fast were you going? I suspect your impellers will need replacing and your thermostats. Plus you probably need to flush the motor out - hopefully it is a trim cylinder? Did you notice any vibration after the incident? Did you check your gear lube monitor bottles and you trim cylinder reservoir - are either low? You may need to touch up bottom paint as well.

Its pretty sandy. Thank God it was on the south shore. North shore is very rocky. I did not notice ANY vibration after the incident. Boat seemed to run fine. I have been meaning to check the overflow reservoir for milky oil but I am not an engine expert and don't know where it is. haha. I'm trying to find it in the manual. Also... did not check gear lube monitor bottles. I assume I should be looking for milky oil in there as well? Thanks for the advice!

 

[gnealon]

Is your area sandy or muddy or rocky where you ran aground? How fast were you going? I suspect your impellers will need replacing and your thermostats. Plus you probably need to flush the motor out - hopefully it is a trim cylinder? Did you notice any vibration after the incident? Did you check your gear lube monitor bottles and you trim cylinder reservoir - are either low? You may need to touch up bottom paint as well.

Sorry... forgot to answer the "how fast question". I wouldn't say I was at cruise... but I could tell you I was on plane. So... pretty fast i guess. Just a guess.... ~30 MPH?!?!?

 

[David Morgan]

I'm sorry to hear about your mishap.

I am trying to understand what you are describing with your GPS. If your GPS is set for the WGS 84 geodetic system and you are using a WGS 84 electronic chart, then there is going to be no difference in position accuracy regardless of how close you are to Boston or any other place for that matter. This is different from chart error, usually caused by surveys conducted before survey grade GPS systems were available. Chart error can be caused by the the provider of the digital charts using these older surveys because nothing newer is available yet.

I was also wondering if your chart has soundings or contour lines? Some digital charts have very scarce soundings compared to NOAA raster or paper charts. Were you using a digital chart with very few soundings and other identifiers? This may be the real problem. I have seen some horrible digital charts with very little information available, especially when you zoom in (go to a larger scale) The scale of a chart is inverse to what most people would think. The larger the number, the more detail but the less area it covers since it is a 1/x function.

I think you may consider upgrading your navigation system if you are going to be running through poorly marked, narrow, shallow waterways. You can get electronic navigation systems that will display either vector or raster images. I find that sometimes it is advantageous to use one or the other or both at the same time, depending on the situation. Furuno and Raymarine make the more popular chart plotters. The more advanced Garmin systems are also good.

 

[gnealon]

I don't understand what you are describing about your GPS. If your GPS is set for the WGS 84 geodetic system and you are using a WGS 84 chart, then there is going to be no difference in position accuracy regardless of how close you are to Boston or any other place for that matter. This is different from chart error, usually caused by surveys conducted before survey grade GPS systems were available. Or simply by the the provider of the digital charts using these older surveys because nothing newer is available yet.

I was also wondering if your chart has soundings? Some digital charts have very scarce soundings compared to NOAA raster or paper charts. Were you using a digital chart with very few soundings and other identifiers? This may be the real problem. I have seen some horrible digital charts with very little information available, especially when you zoom in (go to a larger scale) The scale of a chart is inverse to what most people would think. The larger the number, the more detail but the less area it covers since it is a 1/x function.

I think you may consider upgrading your navigation system if you are going to be running through poorly marked, narrow, shallow waterways. You can get electronic navigation systems that will display either vector or raster images. I find that sometimes it is advantageous to use one or the other, depending on the situation.

Thanks David. I am not an expert in GPS. A friend told me my accuracy problem is probably due to the GPS being set up in the Boston area. (meaning it searching for the wrong satellites) But you could be right as well. I have a Garmin 4208. And the boat is a 2005. So i would have thought the charts would be pretty new?!?! Thanks for the input.

 

[Sea Gull]

Dude, you have no clue where you are. Hemlock Cove is NOT on Long Island Sound.
Hemlock Cove is on the south shore of Long Island. Please take a basic navigation course.

 

[Vince_nj1]

Sorry... forgot to answer the "how fast question". I wouldn't say I was at cruise... but I could tell you I was on plane. So... pretty fast i guess. Just a gess.... ~30 MPH?!?!?

I'm sorry about your incident, but you should consider yourself very lucky.. Running at 30 MPH at night in unfamiliar waters and not knowing where the channel is a recipe a for disaster. You should have immediately come off plane once you became confused about the channel and your position.

I was in similar situation when I bought my first boat. I was taking it from NY Harbor down to a shore house on Barnegat bay. I was running at night using only paper charts and my compass. (I didn’t have a GPS back then) I was on plane and couldn’t find the next buoy. I immediately slowed down to trolling speed and ran aground a few seconds later. Because I was going slow, my grounding was a non-event. I trimmed up the drive and idled back to the channel and continued on.

Hopefully you are someone that learns from their mistakes. Glad no one was hurt. The boat can be fixed.

Thanks for sharing your story, hopefully others will learn from this.

 

[gnealon]

Dude, you have no clue where you are. Hemlock Cove is NOT on Long Island Sound.
Hemlock Cove is on the south shore of Long Island. Please take a basic navigation course.

Easy.... it was a mistake. I knew exactly where i was.

 

[gnealon]

I'm sorry about your incident, but you should consider yourself very lucky.. Running at 30 MPH at night in unfamiliar waters and not knowing where the channel is a recipe a for disaster. You should have immediately come off plane once you became confused about the channel and your position.

I was in similar situation when I bought my first boat. I was taking it from NY Harbor down to a shore house on Barnegat bay. I was running at night using only paper charts and my compass. (I didn’t have a GPS back then) I was on plane and couldn’t find the next buoy. I immediately slowed down to trolling speed and ran aground a few seconds later. Because I was going slow, my grounding was a non-event. I trimmed up the drive and idled back to the channel and continued on.

Hopefully you are someone that learns from their mistakes. Glad no one was hurt. The boat can be fixed.

Thanks for sharing your story, hopefully others will learn from this.

You are right... it was dumb. I was actually just about to slow down since i turn was coming up but it was too late. Number one thing i learned... if you are having a hard time seeing, slow down. Ohh well, thanks for sharing your story.

 

[AKBASSKING]

I would have to agree with Gull. Add to "Things to do" take the navigation course. It will help you a lot. I have found it to be a necessity on the right coast with the ICW and all the boat traffic and crowded waters.

 

[David Morgan]

I'm afraid your friend misunderstands a couple different concepts about GPS.

The first misunderstanding is that although you first initialized your system in Boston, your GPS downloaded an almanac of satellites which tell the GPS which satellites to look for and when depending on the GPS's current position. The almanac also tells the GPS exactly where the satellites are at any given time which is critical information that allows the GPS to draw internally lines of position that allow it to determine its position. This almanac gets updated almost constantly. So it does not matter where you are, if the GPS has a fix of its position, it knows which satellites to look for first. Essentially, the GPS will not give you a false position based on where it was first initialized. It draws its lines of positions based on real time information. Where the LOP's intersect is the position of the GPS..all based on real time satellite information. This has nothing to do with how far you are from Boston. Your GPS will have the same accuracy regardless of where you take it in the world.

Another misunderstanding your friend has is that there is going to be very little difference in the satellites available between Boston and wherever you were. Imagine a sky that is 180 degrees North-South by 180 degrees East-West. If you are 60 nautical miles away from Boston, the maximum difference the sky is going to be is one degree...virtually nothing especially when you consider the GPS throws out or weighs much less satellites that are near the horizon or close to the zenith. In technical terms, the satellite constellation will have shifted by no more than one degree.

I'm not going to lecture you about going fast through unfamiliar shallow waters. It looks like others have already rubbed salt into those wounds.

 

[Asureyez]

I'm a bit concerned that your GPS was not reporting accurately enough for you to have spotted something of channel marker before taking out the running gear. We've all had or moments of "hard earned experience!" trust me.

Here are a few tips that might help you should you find yourself in this situation again where electronics have failed you, OR you have become disoriented at night and can't confirm your position visually as shown by the electronics.

1. The moment you realize you are not at a known position, stop the boat.

2. Darken your boat and get out binoculars and search the waters in the direction you believe the channel to be and then work outwards from there. Binoculars will work at night and really good ones will help you see more rather than less.
Scan the horizion and down to the waters below the horizion. Often the channel is way away from where you think it is. It is critical to get a ded. position before proceeding.

Search the shore for known landmarks, lights, antennas, buildings etc and draw bearing lines on your PAPER chart to get at least two intersecting bearing lines, three is what is really needed. You now have a zone of suspected position. Take a course line on your PAPER chart to the first channel maker and commence a slow speed run to it, as long as this course doesn't run over troubled water.
Run by compass heading and time/speed calculations. Such as: you believe you are 3 (15840 FT.) miles from the 1st. channel marker and you are running at 10 knots (60,500 ft per hr), reduce speed to dead slow if you have not raised the bouy in 13 minutes (2700 ft off or 1/2 mile), search with the binoculars again, and proceed on course at 10 knots for another 2 minutes searching with binoculars.

3. When you raise the bouy commence forward progress slow until you establish a known position based upon ded position from for the next channel marker. Maintain a heading, time and speed log until your GPS comes back on line reliably or you get to your destination. Up date your ded position every few minutes until you can move from a deducted position to a known position.

Have that GPS checked out.

 

[gnealon]

Have that GPS checked out.

I'm not the type of guy to pass blame, but I think my GPS threw me out of the channel which caused me to run ground. When I was anchored up... i thought it would be safe to call the Coast Guard and just let them know i am spending the night in a state channel. I couldn't move b/c of the fog. I told them my GPS coordinates and they were all confused. They had me located in CT somewhere.

 

[Larry]

I don’t know where to begin, but I hope you learn from this. I don’t think you realize the danger you put your passengers in travelling you “think” 30 MPH at night… Forget about the navigational issues which were probably user error (4208 out of the box “knows” were it is anywhere) but did you ever see what a floating log does to a boat at 30 MPH or any floating wood, how about lobster pots? Sorry to sound like I am coming down on you but you have to stand back and see from our perspective that your entire night was bad judgment. I have a feeling even after the grounding you didn’t even open the engine hatch to check the bilge because you would have seen the drive reservoir bottles rite on top. I have been boating for 25 years and can say I never put any passenger in danger, I do not travel at night unless it is very familiar water and never above hull speed at night, you can’t see what is immediately in front. I am truly glad everybody was OK but you got to realize this is the making of a story that doesn’t turn out well. Some people think they got a boat and they can go were ever and whenever they want, this is just not true.

Just a side not you mention that you weren’t at cruise speed but that you were doing 30 MPH? Do you cruise much faster than this? 30 MPH is a very fast cruise speed for the 280, how much faster do you cruise?

FYI: Did you confirm the GPS was working before you left??

 

[JohnEGraham]

Hey, I Just did the run we talked about from Boston yesterday (other posts you started http://clubsearay.com/forum/showthread.php?t=17730&highlight=boston+long+island&page=3)
and That's where My friend is keeping the Boat in Babylon and we had our Two GPSs going and the Actual Buoys are NOT where Buoys show up on the GPS's. I updated mine at the end of last year.
There where some other boats following the Old buoy channel and we where in the "New" channel and the water level got down to under 4 ft of water. There where red buoys all over the place. My friend grew up on a Boat down on the Great South Bay and he was pissed.
NOTE: The other area which he said changed was at the Fire Island Inlet with some major changes since last year and we where there at High tide and the water was very low in the main Channel again these where alll his comments. I will ask him about the area you are talking about to see if it is the same. Hopefully some one will be working on all of this. Maybe they are moving the channel to get ready to do some dredging ( sp? ) we did see some of the large Dredging boats on the way in.
Good Luck with the boat. John G.

 

[gnealon]

I'm afraid your friend misunderstands a couple different concepts about GPS.

WHAT??? Friends are NEVER wrong :grin:

I'm not going to lecture you about going fast through unfamiliar shallow waters. It looks like others have already rubbed salt into those wounds.

Thanks... i was uncomfortable going that fast in unfamiliar waters. The water was around 3 ft, we were hoping to trust the GPS and go on plane to reduce our draft. Mistake... i know :smt009


Check out my other comment about talking to the Coast Guard. I gave them my GPS coordinates and they located me in CT somewhere. I was hoping it was a setting on the GPS somewhere. But what you are saying makes total sense. :huh: