My wife and I bought a boat this season and having never owned or driven a
boat before, I've been learning to drive it. But in the meantime, I've done
my level best to "destroy" it by running into docks trying to park it etc.
We keep it on a manmade lake that the state regulates the depth of......so
there are parts that are very shallow and they get even shallower as the
season goes on......tonight we went out for a ride and I ran over either
some rocks or a log or something.....I don't know how much damage I
did......what is the worst case.....that could be.....could I have damaged
the fiberglass???? if so can it be repaired........last weekend I tried to
back the boat up to a small sandy island because that's what everyone else
does......and I ended up with the propeller stuck in the sand.....could that
have damaged the propeller or the mechanism......As you can see I know
nothing about boats or anything mechanical........I'm not sure that the trim
is going all the way up......If anyone can shed some light on this, I would
be very appreciative.......
by the way the boat is an I/O 18 ft SeaRay......

On Sat, 16 Aug 2003 02:17:17 GMT, "Jesse Dinkin"
wrote:
My wife and I bought a boat this season and having never owned or driven a
boat before, I've been learning to drive it. But in the meantime, I've done
my level best to "destroy" it by running into docks trying to park it etc.
We keep it on a manmade lake that the state regulates the depth of......so
there are parts that are very shallow and they get even shallower as the
season goes on......tonight we went out for a ride and I ran over either
some rocks or a log or something.....I don't know how much damage I
did......what is the worst case.....that could be.....could I have damaged
the fiberglass???? if so can it be repaired........last weekend I tried to
back the boat up to a small sandy island because that's what everyone else
does......and I ended up with the propeller stuck in the sand.....could that
have damaged the propeller or the mechanism......As you can see I know
nothing about boats or anything mechanical........I'm not sure that the trim
is going all the way up......If anyone can shed some light on this, I would
be very appreciative.......
by the way the boat is an I/O 18 ft SeaRay......
================================================== ===
You are making a good case for getting an older boat for your first
learning experiences. Most of us have done all that and more at one
time or another, but a really ambitious beginner can cram it all into
just a few weekends.

Better yet, why not take some safe boating courses and try to find
some knowledgable folks who can go out with you a few times and show
you the ropes. You've been lucky so far that all injuries have been
to the boat.

!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
html
head
meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1"
title/title
/head
body text="#000000" bgcolor="#ccffff" link="#000099" vlink="#990099"
alink="#000099"
I recommend you take the link below before you go out again.br
br
Capt. Frankbr
br
Jesse Dinkin wrote:br
blockquote type="cite"
r.com"
pre wrap=""My wife and I bought a boat this season and having never owned or driven a
boat before, I've been learning to drive it. But in the meantime, I've done
my level best to "destroy" it by running into docks trying to park it etc.
We keep it on a manmade lake that the state regulates the depth of......so
there are parts that are very shallow and they get even shallower as the
season goes on......tonight we went out for a ride and I ran over either
some rocks or a log or something.....I don't know how much damage I
did......what is the worst case.....that could be.....could I have damaged
the fiberglass???? if so can it be repaired........last weekend I tried to
back the boat up to a small sandy island because that's what everyone else
does......and I ended up with the propeller stuck in the sand.....could that
have damaged the propeller or the mechanism......As you can see I know
nothing about boats or anything mechanical........I'm not sure that the trim
is going all the way up......If anyone can shed some light on this, I would
be very appreciative.......
by the way the boat is an I/O 18 ft SeaRay......


/pre
/blockquote
/body
/html

!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
html
head
meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1"
title/title
/head
body text="#000000" bgcolor="#ffffff"
sorry hit wrong button. After all its not a GPS.br
br
Capt. Frank wrote:br
blockquote type="cite"
.earthlink.net"
meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;"
title/title
I recommend you take the link below before you go out again./blockquote
br
pre id="line13"<span class="start-tag"a/spanspan
class="attribute-name" HREF/span=span class="attribute-value""/cgauxweb/public/ABC.htm"/span>America's Boating Course</span
class="end-tag"a/span>/pre
br
blockquote type="cite"
.earthlink.net"br
br
Capt. Frankbr
br
Jesse Dinkin wrote:br
blockquote type="cite"
r.com"
pre wrap=""My wife and I bought a boat this season and having never owned or driven a
boat before, I've been learning to drive it. But in the meantime, I've done
my level best to "destroy" it by running into docks trying to park it etc.
We keep it on a manmade lake that the state regulates the depth of......so
there are parts that are very shallow and they get even shallower as the
season goes on......tonight we went out for a ride and I ran over either
some rocks or a log or something.....I don't know how much damage I
did......what is the worst case.....that could be.....could I have damaged
the fiberglass???? if so can it be repaired........last weekend I tried to
back the boat up to a small sandy island because that's what everyone else
does......and I ended up with the propeller stuck in the sand.....could that
have damaged the propeller or the mechanism......As you can see I know
nothing about boats or anything mechanical........I'm not sure that the trim
is going all the way up......If anyone can shed some light on this, I would
be very appreciative.......
by the way the boat is an I/O 18 ft SeaRay......


/pre
/blockquote
/blockquote
/body
/html

I believe this is the proper link:
www.cgaux.org/cgauxweb/public/ABC.htm

-- frosty

Capt. Frank wrote:
sorry hit wrong button. After all its not a GPS.

Capt. Frank wrote:

I recommend you take the link below before you go out again.


a HREF="/cgauxweb/public/ABC.htm"America's Boating Course/a




Capt. Frank

Jesse Dinkin wrote:

My wife and I bought a boat this season and having never owned or
driven a
boat before, I've been learning to drive it. But in the meantime,
I've done
my level best to "destroy" it by running into docks trying to park it
etc.
We keep it on a manmade lake that the state regulates the depth
of......so
there are parts that are very shallow and they get even shallower as
the
season goes on......tonight we went out for a ride and I ran over
either
some rocks or a log or something.....I don't know how much damage I
did......what is the worst case.....that could be.....could I have
damaged
the fiberglass???? if so can it be repaired........last weekend I
tried to
back the boat up to a small sandy island because that's what everyone
else
does......and I ended up with the propeller stuck in the
sand.....could that
have damaged the propeller or the mechanism......As you can see I know
nothing about boats or anything mechanical........I'm not sure that
the trim
is going all the way up......If anyone can shed some light on this, I
would
be very appreciative.......
by the way the boat is an I/O 18 ft SeaRay......

On Sat, 16 Aug 2003 02:17:17 GMT, "Jesse Dinkin" wrote:

My wife and I bought a boat this season and having never owned or driven a
boat before, I've been learning to drive it. But in the meantime, I've done
my level best to "destroy" it by running into docks trying to park it etc.
We keep it on a manmade lake that the state regulates the depth of......so
there are parts that are very shallow and they get even shallower as the
season goes on......tonight we went out for a ride and I ran over either
some rocks or a log or something.....I don't know how much damage I
did......what is the worst case.....that could be.....could I have damaged
the fiberglass???? if so can it be repaired........last weekend I tried to
back the boat up to a small sandy island because that's what everyone else
does......and I ended up with the propeller stuck in the sand.....could that
have damaged the propeller or the mechanism......As you can see I know
nothing about boats or anything mechanical........I'm not sure that the trim
is going all the way up......If anyone can shed some light on this, I would
be very appreciative.......
by the way the boat is an I/O 18 ft SeaRay......

Jesse, I think you'd be much better off if you simply removed the propeller. You
don't need one. Just launch the boat, sit in it a while (with your life vests
on), and then get out and go home.

John
On the 'Poco Loco' out of Deale, MD

I do not recal that boat having a depth sounder. Run to the nearest marine
store and pick up a fish finder that will give you not only the depth read
out, but also sound a warning for shallow water. You should be able to
install this in about 2 hours or so.


www.fred.net/jrirvine
"Jesse Dinkin" wrote in message
. ..
My wife and I bought a boat this season and having never owned or driven a
boat before, I've been learning to drive it. But in the meantime, I've
done
my level best to "destroy" it by running into docks trying to park it etc.
We keep it on a manmade lake that the state regulates the depth of......so
there are parts that are very shallow and they get even shallower as the
season goes on......tonight we went out for a ride and I ran over either
some rocks or a log or something.....I don't know how much damage I
did......what is the worst case.....that could be.....could I have damaged
the fiberglass???? if so can it be repaired........last weekend I tried
to
back the boat up to a small sandy island because that's what everyone else
does......and I ended up with the propeller stuck in the sand.....could
that
have damaged the propeller or the mechanism......As you can see I know
nothing about boats or anything mechanical........I'm not sure that the
trim
is going all the way up......If anyone can shed some light on this, I
would
be very appreciative.......
by the way the boat is an I/O 18 ft SeaRay......

In article ,
says...
My wife and I bought a boat this season and having never owned or driven a
boat before, I've been learning to drive it. But in the meantime, I've done
my level best to "destroy" it by running into docks trying to park it etc.
We keep it on a manmade lake that the state regulates the depth of......so
there are parts that are very shallow and they get even shallower as the
season goes on......tonight we went out for a ride and I ran over either
some rocks or a log or something.....I don't know how much damage I
did......what is the worst case.....that could be.....could I have damaged
the fiberglass???? if so can it be repaired........last weekend I tried to
back the boat up to a small sandy island because that's what everyone else
does......and I ended up with the propeller stuck in the sand.....could that
have damaged the propeller or the mechanism......As you can see I know
nothing about boats or anything mechanical........I'm not sure that the trim
is going all the way up......If anyone can shed some light on this, I would
be very appreciative.......
by the way the boat is an I/O 18 ft SeaRay......



Last year was our first. We baot a used boat (20' Larson I/O) but it was
in very nice condition. Certainly did some damage that first year.
Docking was a nightmare. Those bow mounted anchors opposite our slip
caused me to learn a little about fiberglass repair. We did go through a
prop that year and hit bottom a few times (at slow speed).

The good news is after that first year there is a huge improvement in my
skills. Docking rarely is a problem. We are into August and I have not
runn aground or broke anything. Hang in there. Next year should be
easier!

By the way I took one of those boater saftey courses. It was pretty much
useless as almost the entire thing was geared to PWC's. If you take a
course make sure it covers what you need before signing up.

The best way to stay out of trouble of the type that you are having is
to preplan each thing that you want to do. Consider all alternatives
and have several alternate plans. A boat is not like a car. When
coming onto a beach study the beach before you commit to coming ashore.
I don't remember seeing any one back their boat onto the beach. Usually
they will coming in slowly until the bow touches. One will get into the
water and then will haul the boat around after getting the motor out of
the water.

Watch what other boaters are doing are they zooming through an area that
you want to go through or are they avoiding it by going around it.

The best rules for a newcomer is observe, plan and go slow. Hitting an
obstruction will be significantly different at 5 mph than at 25.


Trevor Dennis wrote:

Wayne. B writes

Better yet, why not take some safe boating courses and try to find
some knowledgable folks who can go out with you a few times and show
you the ropes. You've been lucky so far that all injuries have been
to the boat.

And the cost of the course would be a lot less than his repair bill.
I've just done the RYA powerboat level two here in the UK. Apart from
the obvious, they taught us stuff I might never have worked out for
myself.
Money very well spent.

--
Trevor Dennis
Remove s-p-a-m to email

--
From: Indianapolis, Indiana

Forty or forty-one years ago, after having our then-ancient 26 foot
Chris Craft pulled off of a snag and towed back to the marina, the also
ancient dockmaster just grinned and said "Well boy, now you know: You
can't run a boat everywhere the water is wet!" That lesson sunk in very
well when I paid for the tow, a haul-out, shaft straightening, prop
rebuild, replacement of the broken rudder stuffing box, and
straightening the bent rudder stock. Everything can be broken, but
everything can also be fixed - given enough money and/or work!