sandydlc
Active Member
Well our first weekend cruise on our Sea Ray 450 turned out to be a bit of a disaster.
Just to rewind a bit - we took delivery of the Sea Ray one week ago Saturday from our broker. We drove at idle speed over to get fueled up and then went straight to our new slip at Fisherman’s terminal. We had no issues with docking.
This past weekend we left for Poulsbo Saturday around noon and since it was our first time out in our new boat we decided to cruise past the Seattle waterfront before heading to Poulsbo.
While on that cruise, the only remarkable thing we both noted was that it was a bit of a challenge getting up on plane and then we were only able to go about 20-22 knots at around 2600 rpm. I instinctively didn’t want to push it further. t thought that it might have been because we were fighting a current as it was our first cruise beyond the lake, so we continued on to our destination.
After getting through Agate pass and just before entering the channel to Liberty Bay, I slowed down to about 7-8 knots. As we slowed down and came off plane, I could feel the engines hesitate, almost stutter, slow and then move forward, stutter, slow, then move forward. I slowed down further to about 5-6 knots and the strange motion stopped.
When we arrived in Poulsbo, my husband was attempting to dock the boat and had a terrible time. (a little background on us - we have over 15 years of experience on a 30' Chaparral express cruiser with twin Volvo Penta drives. My husband is very accomplished at maneuvering a twin engine boat in tight quarters) There was no wind though a bit of current coming into the marina and the boat was just not responding as we expected. I would tell him to pivot to port and he simply couldn’t. He tried first with the joystick and then later with the drives but just barely got us docked.
When we left on Sunday morning, the wind was blowing about 9-10 knots from the North, but after checking the forecast, we realized it wasn’t getting better anytime before dark so we decided to go ahead and leave.
We tried to leave the dock and had the same problems with steering/control. We ended up having to exit the marina stern first so that we had enough power to push against the wind.
When we were out in the bay we decided to do some testing. We didn’t realize until we were on the phone with our mechanic that the gear pressure on the starboard pod was at zero. Thankfully the previous owner had left some bottles of gear lube in the engine room and our mechanic walked me through adding what we had so that we could get the pod up to pressure, enough to get it to engage the gears if we needed it.
We limped home on one engine and made it through the locks with some assistance from the lock attendants and their awesome lassoing skills! (got our bow cleat on the first try!). When we arrived at our marina, we started the starboard engine just long enough to allow us to dock with full control.
It was such a frustrating experience because we had just taken delivery of the boat and this is our first boat with the Mercury pod system. We had no idea when we were having trouble docking that the problem was that we were down to one engine. It's really important for new Sea Ray owners to become very familiar with all of the screens in Vessel View and notice immediately if one of the readings is drastically off. Had we done that on Saturday afternoon, we might have been able to have a mechanic come out to help us or at least to know before we left the slip that we were only on one engine. We had seen that the RPMs were synced and it appeared that both engines were working. They were but both pods were not.
I'm working with our local Sea Ray dealer on this and they said that there is a service bulletin for exactly this issue.
Hoping we didn’t do any further damage to that pod while doing our testing/docking over the weekend.
Has anyone else experienced a problem like this with the gear lube leaking out of the top of the pod? I'm worried that the repair is going to require a haul-out and worse yet that it will be costly. I can't help but wonder if the previous owner suspected a problem or did we just get very unlucky?
The good news is that we really loved using the boat over the weekend. We were super comfortable and it was such a novelty to be able to shower and have space to move around!!
Hoping for any help on this gear lube leaking issue!!
Thanks,
Sandy
Just to rewind a bit - we took delivery of the Sea Ray one week ago Saturday from our broker. We drove at idle speed over to get fueled up and then went straight to our new slip at Fisherman’s terminal. We had no issues with docking.
This past weekend we left for Poulsbo Saturday around noon and since it was our first time out in our new boat we decided to cruise past the Seattle waterfront before heading to Poulsbo.
While on that cruise, the only remarkable thing we both noted was that it was a bit of a challenge getting up on plane and then we were only able to go about 20-22 knots at around 2600 rpm. I instinctively didn’t want to push it further. t thought that it might have been because we were fighting a current as it was our first cruise beyond the lake, so we continued on to our destination.
After getting through Agate pass and just before entering the channel to Liberty Bay, I slowed down to about 7-8 knots. As we slowed down and came off plane, I could feel the engines hesitate, almost stutter, slow and then move forward, stutter, slow, then move forward. I slowed down further to about 5-6 knots and the strange motion stopped.
When we arrived in Poulsbo, my husband was attempting to dock the boat and had a terrible time. (a little background on us - we have over 15 years of experience on a 30' Chaparral express cruiser with twin Volvo Penta drives. My husband is very accomplished at maneuvering a twin engine boat in tight quarters) There was no wind though a bit of current coming into the marina and the boat was just not responding as we expected. I would tell him to pivot to port and he simply couldn’t. He tried first with the joystick and then later with the drives but just barely got us docked.
When we left on Sunday morning, the wind was blowing about 9-10 knots from the North, but after checking the forecast, we realized it wasn’t getting better anytime before dark so we decided to go ahead and leave.
We tried to leave the dock and had the same problems with steering/control. We ended up having to exit the marina stern first so that we had enough power to push against the wind.
When we were out in the bay we decided to do some testing. We didn’t realize until we were on the phone with our mechanic that the gear pressure on the starboard pod was at zero. Thankfully the previous owner had left some bottles of gear lube in the engine room and our mechanic walked me through adding what we had so that we could get the pod up to pressure, enough to get it to engage the gears if we needed it.
We limped home on one engine and made it through the locks with some assistance from the lock attendants and their awesome lassoing skills! (got our bow cleat on the first try!). When we arrived at our marina, we started the starboard engine just long enough to allow us to dock with full control.
It was such a frustrating experience because we had just taken delivery of the boat and this is our first boat with the Mercury pod system. We had no idea when we were having trouble docking that the problem was that we were down to one engine. It's really important for new Sea Ray owners to become very familiar with all of the screens in Vessel View and notice immediately if one of the readings is drastically off. Had we done that on Saturday afternoon, we might have been able to have a mechanic come out to help us or at least to know before we left the slip that we were only on one engine. We had seen that the RPMs were synced and it appeared that both engines were working. They were but both pods were not.
I'm working with our local Sea Ray dealer on this and they said that there is a service bulletin for exactly this issue.
Hoping we didn’t do any further damage to that pod while doing our testing/docking over the weekend.
Has anyone else experienced a problem like this with the gear lube leaking out of the top of the pod? I'm worried that the repair is going to require a haul-out and worse yet that it will be costly. I can't help but wonder if the previous owner suspected a problem or did we just get very unlucky?
The good news is that we really loved using the boat over the weekend. We were super comfortable and it was such a novelty to be able to shower and have space to move around!!
Hoping for any help on this gear lube leaking issue!!
Thanks,
Sandy