My biggest boating mistake.

My first boat, the 320 had an LOA of 35'6"....I put 35' of it on the beach one night, in the fog....lots of lessons learned there.
 
Yeah. . .in the days before GPS, on my blowboat, I got a number of near "Is that land?" stories while sailing at night.

Three years ago, I nearly hit a LIT marker because the jib obscured it. Boy was that dumb.
 
This is not my biggest mistake, by far, but it could have been. We had 4 couples on our boat for dinner (250) at a restaurant in Grand Lagoon, and we had just dropped one couple off on their dock in "The Cove". I was accelerating on to plane as I arc'd around in a right-hand turn around the red marker heading back out into the main body of the bay. I had the GPS/Fish finder in the side-view mode as a backup to the Sea Ray depth sounder.

I remember distinctly as the bottom display drew a very, very steep climb up to about 2.0 feet and then dove back down to about 40 feet in the span of about 10 - 15 seconds. All's well that ends well. Check out the charts - Redfish Point in PC, Fl, just off the tip of the Golf Course at Tyndall AFB. Red on right return - DOH!
 
bmac said:
My first boat, the 320 had an LOA of 35'6"....I put 35' of it on the beach one night, in the fog....lots of lessons learned there.
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I put our previous boat, a 2400SCR Maxum, up on a dead tree (lots of them laying across the water in the area, fallen from shore) in the dark. Narrow river, trees laying all over the place, first time boating at night, distracted...good news is I was going idle speed and another boater passed by about 10 minutes later and he pulled me off.

I've done the swim ladder things many times, probably will again.
 
jrirvine1 said:
Biggest mistake:
My first boat was a Bayliner.
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I pulled into a marina one night with reservations for a transient slip. The kid on the dock told me which slip to use. He said "it is the open slip right next the Bayliner" . In a joking maner I said “Bayliner? I don’t want be next a Bayliner, those guys cant’t drive. If he leaves before me he’ll probably take my bow with him”.
The kid responded. “It’s OK, its my father’s boat" :wow: :grin:
 
It's an X5 with the fuel hose hanging out of the filler neck - he drove off with it still in the truck....
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That's actually an X3. I've never seen a guy behind the wheel of an X3, dragging a hose or not, so I'll assume SHE drove off with it still in the truck... :grin:
 
I ran over a large log in the Delaware River with my then brand-new 42' sailboat. What makes it more embarassing is that both my Dad and I had our heads down trying to make sense of the MARPA feature on the radar. Had at least one of us had our heads up we easily would have seen the thing. No real damage done, but scared the crap out of us.

This is not my biggest mistake (by a longshot) but this is all I'm going to submit here!
 
I have one of those too Vince.

My Dad called me about 10 years ago and said, "So, I've been looking at this used Bayliner in Lake Erie..."

Background: I grew up on custom boats built on Bertram-era Trojan hulls, and Dad had looked at Bertram's just months before that, so the boat-snob in me took over before I knew it. (nevermind that I owned a Rinker at the time)

I said, "Yeah, I'll stop you right there, I would strongly recommend against that size and year Bayliner, and most Bayliners for that matter... Run away."

He said, "Ah, yeah, I just bought it. I wondered if you could recommend a route and some Marinas on the way home."

gulp.

(He sold it on eBay later for a small fraction of what he paid for it.)
 
Guys...while I know sometime made to just be funny lets try and refrain from brand bashing. Thank you and back to my biggest boating mistake ever....
 
I think X-Born is not going to be amused.
 
well... either will x-bolts... or x-min.

Could be worse... could have x-less and Mrs. X ganging up on him.... or Wx99 giving advice.
 
mrsrobinson said:
I put our previous boat, a 2400SCR Maxum, up on a dead tree (lots of them laying across the water in the area, fallen from shore) in the dark. Narrow river, trees laying all over the place, first time boating at night, distracted...good news is I was going idle speed and another boater passed by about 10 minutes later and he pulled me off.

I've done the swim ladder things many times, probably will again.
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I wish I were doing idle speed. I ran a couple of hundred feet in a foot of water with the props turning in the very soft bottom at 25 knots. When daylight came I could see the prop rotations in the sand. We were very lucky no one was hurt...and none of the running gear was either. I, on the other hand, had a severely bruised ego. I justifed buying the 40 because it had radar and a chartplotter.....
 
Pirate said:
He left out the best part..... the typical "Wingless" watermark is across the bottom of the photo. :grin:
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I'm back at work now, but I looked at it at home earlier. There were a lot of details like that left out - picture taken from behind, going down the highway, snow or ice or something, and "Wingless."
 
Co-Owned our first boat with a friend... He broke it - I fixed it! Overall a good experience though.

It was a 21' Doral Tara that was constantly abused by her captain. There was the time while skooting through fishing nets in Lake Huron at 35Kts when one of the cables must have been too close to the surface. It stopped the boat in a hurry, throwing one passenger into the windshield. Nobody seriously hurt, but I asked Captian "didn't you see the flags for the nets?". He replied, "Flags, man that area looked like an Alpine Ski Valley!". Oops, forgot that that meant nets in the water - STEER CLEAR!

Another time, the camper top came loose on one side, fell back and hit his son in the head while sitting on the stearn, then fell into the water. That drag ended up tearing the other mounts out of the fiberglas and into the drink it went. Right under the Blue Water Bridge at Pt. Huron Michigan (in early May). Captain's wife instructed Capt'n to jump in and retrieve the top before it completely disappeared under the c-c-c-cold water. Time to reassess that relationship!!

As for myself, there was the time my wife and I anchored our 26' Dancer in the St. Clair River beside Stag Island. We relaxed in the sun and soon fell asleep only to be awakened by shouting. I looked around to see some "jerk" manouvering his boat way too close to ours to set his anchor, but he finally motored away. Relaxing again, there were more shouts. I looked up to see a friend waving at us while his boat was heading up stream... then I happened to look at the Island... which also was heading up stream!! It didnt' take long to figure out that WE were the only ones moving since our anchor had let go in 20ft of water and now we were in 40' of water heading for the shipping channel.

That WOULD have been a shocker to wake up down river to a freighter's horn then look over to see its bow wave coming at us!!! It was our lucky day.

Oh, by the way - twice for me leaving the slip without disconnecting shore power.:smt038
 
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