What's the worst day you ever had boating?

[mickvk]

Rumdog was just saying that he drove a boat into a wall at full speed and I can relate. I had a K&B outboard on a Prather Spitfire with plastic geared servos. When I hit it with the starter I must've stripped 'em out with the jolt. I didn't feel that the steering was erratic until I was at speed and then I ran the thing up the shore. Of course there were like 20 people watching. What an embarrassment.

I know there are a few of you with Viking Funeral stories (boat fire at sea!) and other hilarity. How else have you sunk 'em or smashed 'em?

[JMSCARD]

In a 44" aeromarine cat I had a full meltdown... including turnigy monster esc, Scorpion 4035, and the 4 5s 5000mah lipos..... all toast, motor wires shorted and took out everything... was a $800 Sunday :)

I also had a pickle fork hydro boat sink and had to hire a dive team (30ft of 40 degree water)... $250 for the divers along with the damage to the boats electronics....lol....

Smoked a $400 lehner 2250 on its third outing when I had a flexshaft binding issue.... wondered why it was losing speed... got so hot one of the motor wires fell right out of it!!

If this was a plane forum it would really, really get ugly I have lots of them that look like below.... this is what you get for hovering 10 feet off the ground in 20mph winds... lol.... was a nice fliton John Gazellis too....

[AlanN]

I ran my gas whip (3060 lehner on 8S 2P) up and over the shore during the mill. No sleep that weekend cause me to not see the far shore too well.

BUT

The worst day ever was a couple of years ago when Howard Tucker, Steve Reesor and I went to Elmira, N.Y. The only serious misfortune for me was burning up a 41.160. I think the problem was leaving the reciever on and the transmitter off. Smoke started to pour out the hatch....good thing my buddy Howard saw it in time for me to get it out before the entire hull went up in flames.

Steve and Howard had their own, more serious, problems that weekend:

Steve let someone run his open mono during testing. The driver just pinned the throttle and flipped the boat..it was/is a 60MPH 10S 2P mono. The hatch ripped off and the entire set of cells went to the bottom. And I don't think Steve ever got an apology from the driver. Estimated value would have been $2000. He lost a speed o and or motor to. Not the cheap stuff schultze and lehner 3060.

Howard was pitting for me when his troubles started. We just got to the hot pits when someone yelled "fire!". We looked back at the pits and Howards' open rigger was starting to spew flames like a rocket exhaust. The boat was on a table under an e-z up. The flames were starting to lick the top of the tent when someone else grabbed the boat and was going to throw it in the pond. Howard screamed to throw it on the ground and he did, while I made a bee line towards my fire extinguisher. Howard was able to subdue the flames but it took some time and dirt to fully extinguish the sparks. The cells were brand new and never ran. Must have been some assembly issue. 9S2P. Steve was parked next to Howards tent and must have froze from the excitement.

You never saw a more miserable crew after that Saturday. Howard and Steve went straight to the beer store and we all just sat in Steve's room trying to recount the cash value lost and to find out how we lost so much equipment. We all are experienced racers and have a pretty good amount of knowledge of what we were supposed to do. But after all that we had to question ourselves. I think the total tally of lost stuff was close to $10,000. At least we followed up Sunday and finished our heats without any more losses. I nearly forgot.....during that race Doug Twaits senior railed through Doug Jr's 1/8th scale and obliterated it. I remember hearing a huge smack On the back straight as I was entering the second turn....when I got through the first turn on the second lap there was just flotsom and jetsome strewn about the back straight. So it was a rough trip for many that weekend.

ps When we asked Steve that evening what he was thinking while watching H's rigger go up like a Saturn V his reply was "Man, that sucks!"

[H&MWill]

Rumdog was just saying that he drove a boat into a wall at full speed and I can relate. I had a K&B outboard on a Prather Spitfire with plastic geared servos. When I hit it with the starter I must've stripped 'em out with the jolt. I didn't feel that the steering was erratic until I was at speed and then I ran the thing up the shore. Of course there were like 20 people watching. What an embarrassment.

I know there are a few of you with Viking Funeral stories (boat fire at sea!) and other hilarity. How else have you sunk 'em or smashed 'em?

Thats crazy. I has the same boat Spitfire 1 with a 3.5cc k&b. Receiver got wet and I didnt know it. It came wide open toward shore and wouldnt ya know it one log on the beach and it found it. Total destruction.

[mickvk]

Heh heh. This is like group therapy. I'm telling you, I feel better already!!

I spent countless hours building a float plane and this summer I turned it back into a kit in about 30 seconds. That one hurt.

[m4a1usr]

I've had stuff get toasted but it pales in comparison to what Alan posted. That is just plain carnage! Its bad enough when its our own fault, but gear smoking on powering up seems to leave the worse impression.

John

[tiqueman]

Heres one w/ a happy end. My wedding morning, I decided to go run a Gasser as I had nothing to do but wait around all day... I got on the phone w/ my best man and was talking to him while getting things set up to run. I get everything ready and got off the phone, fired up the boat, which is direct drive, no clutch and launched it at high idle. Grab my radio and realize I did not turn on the reciever in the boat. I watched $2700.00 idle away from me and nothing I could do about it. I was in a large bay. I noticed it had a very slight right turn going on. About 25 minutes later, she came back ashore about 1/4 mile down the beach. Luckily no large vessels came thru the channel.. yet un-luckily, not even a small boat I could flag down to say, hey, take me over to that run-a-way boat.. PLEASE!!! But I got her back and had a great rest of the day.

[siberianhusky]

As a teen saved and saved first I bought and built a dumas wood hotshot, saved some more and got a brand new K&B 3.5. Had a Sanwa AM radio I had used in cars and another boat. After running it for about 3 months one day it turned left stayed WOT and self destructed on bank. Broke the lower unit of the engine, hull just blew apart! Never had a total loss since then. 25 years ago! Thats more depressing than the boat!

[Doby]

http://forums.offshoreelectrics.com/...ead.php?t=3313

[Insaniac]

Another K&B Crash

My first model boat was a Prather Lap Cat w/K&B 3.5. Went to the local pond where there were two Japanese guys sitting/fishing on the shore. Told them they might want to move back (maybe they didn't understand English) but they wouldn't. Launched the tunnel, it made a sweeping arc and crashed WOT into the shore, right between them.

They moved...what is it about K&B OB's?

[mickvk]

My first model boat was a Prather Lap Cat w/K&B 3.5. Went to the local pond where there were two Japanese guys sitting/fishing on the shore. Told them they might want to move back (maybe they didn't understand English) but they wouldn't. Launched the tunnel, it made a sweeping arc and crashed WOT into the shore, right between them.

They moved...what is it about K&B OB's?

I've only been accused of chasing the FISH away not the fishermen!! Nice.

[JimClark]

Cement wall with a scratch built wood 1/10th Hydro

[raptor347]

If we're talking broken boats, the 2006 LA SAWs. I managed to destroy 3 outriggers and a sport hydro in 2 days. The final straw was driving into the tree that hangs off the right side of the island at Legg (I'm not the only victim of the boat eating tree).

Otherwise it would be getting my thumb in a prop. Brain fade, got the thumb in range of a live prop (got distracted and didn't unplug) and bumped the hardware with a wrench (pre 2.4). Instant glitch. Prop only rotated 3-4 times but made 6 clean passes over the top of the thumb. Took abunch of stitches and a while for the nail to grow back. They called me "boat boy" in the ER.

[LarrysDrifter]

Most of my boats are RTR stuff with the exception being my H&M Drifter L.I was testing props a couple weeks ago with my Drifter.1st run went 62 mph with an X445.The next weekend I put a 645 on and lost 10 mph,but still managed to get way airborne.Boat came down hard and when it hit,you could see a lot of pieces of white gel coat go everywhere.I got the boat back and the seam was split about 7 inches long and there is quite a bit of gel coat gone.My heart sank because this is the most high end boat that I have and its not complete yet.My experience isnt nearly as bad as some others here,but its mine and it still makes me sick to look at the damage.

[weil0127]

My worse day was racing my gas sport hydro. It was my second race with the boat (insane gen 2) and one of my fellow boaters boats died in the front stretch. He decided to try and get the boat with a tennis ball during the race. I was in 1st place and came around turn 4 and saw a tennis ball flying. I naturally turned right to miss it and then tried to make the first turn but didn't have a lot of left, because this sport didn't fair well turning left. I ended up hitting the buoy dead on and it pulled out my shaft and $80 dollar prop from voodoo. Now I'm dead in the water and the rest of the field comes up and sure the 2nd place guy T bones me. I have a line almost though the boat from the rudder and prob. I was not a happy camper after that but after 8 hours of body work/painting you couldn't even tell it had been in a crash.

AFTER