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Mr. Luddite

On 6/9/2017 5:11 PM, wrote:
On Fri, 9 Jun 2017 14:21:45 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

On 6/9/2017 12:42 PM, wrote:
On Mon, 29 May 2017 15:26:58 -0400,
wrote:

He was thrown into the water yesterday in a boating accident,
apparently caused by a sudden steering failure. Just talked to his
wife and she says that he's in intensive care and not doing well.

Be safe out there.

===

http://www.ohio.com/news/local/former-northfield-center-trustee-brent-sommer-dies-following-boating-accident-1.772306

Too bad, nice guy who had only been our neighbor for a short time.
It's not clear what malfunctioned on the boat but most likely some
sort of steering failure.

Sad. I had an old Century that was prone to bow steering. Under the
right conditions it could be very scary and dangerous. The problem was
a hydraulic leak in the outdrive tilt/angle plumbing. I could get up on
a plane but the leak would allow the leg to slowly be pushed fully down
(towards the transom) due to the prop force. The result would be
clipping along, and suddenly the bow would dig in and violently turn,
usually to starboard.

Ol' Justin diagnosed and fixed that problem.

===

Bow steering is a possibility that I hadn't considered. Our old
Bertram 33 would do that if you set the trim tabs too far down.

Whatever the cause, it must have been sudden and violent to have
thrown two adults overboard. My neighbor never regained conciousness.

Maybe it's a good thing he remained unconscious. Sounds like he
sustained a very serious injury and could have been in pain.

I don't know if bow steering caused your neighbor's accident but I know
that at high speed bow steering can be very severe in terms of throwing
you off balance.

I had a Robalo Center Console for a while that also would bow steer
unless you constantly adjusted the trim but when you did it would start
to porpoise at high speed. There seemed to be no "sweet" spot. I
couldn't figure out what was going on but the guy that I sold it to
fixed it. Turns out the engine was mounted either too high or too low
(forget which). He adjusted it and the bow steering and porpoising were
cured.