spannerman
Well-known member
I have just got back from a weeks holiday down on the south coast of Norway with the girlfriend at her families cabin. I went to Arendal to see the F1 race which was spectacular, although unlucky for Steve Curtiss that they had a cooling hose failure when they were in the lead and so lost to the Victory team.
While I was 'on holiday' not one but five of our customers ( 4 Princess's and 1 Windy)rang to say they had hit the bottom resulting in several new props and axles and ruined holidays while they waited for them to be repaired. Admittedly the coastline here is a navigational nightmare with thousands of unseen hazards.
But I was always taught when I was having flying lessons, you always have to know your position at any given time in relation to hazards and emergency landing places, and I think the principle holds true for boating too.
And seeing as these expensive boats have chartplotters and depth sounders as standard what excuse is there for driving onto rocks in clear weather, unless you have a motor/steering problem.
It seems to me that many owners just don't take the time to understand the equipment they have at their fingertips.
Then we had a guy the other week with a P38, who noticed the starboard motor ran a little warmer than normal so thought he'd check the header tank, after filling it with 20 liters of water he began too wonder how it could have got so low without seriously overheating...!
He'd poured the water into the oil filler, luckily he had the sense not to start the engine, so we goat it back on one engine and sucked the water out which lay at the bottom of the sump, then we changed the oil and ran it up to get it hot and changed it again, he was lucky as it could have been very expensive, but so often I go onboard and find the handbooks and manuals still in their plastic envelopes never opened.
I guess the owner is too busy making his millions to bother with mundane things like instruction manuals.
Still it keeps us busy and pays our bills...!
While I was 'on holiday' not one but five of our customers ( 4 Princess's and 1 Windy)rang to say they had hit the bottom resulting in several new props and axles and ruined holidays while they waited for them to be repaired. Admittedly the coastline here is a navigational nightmare with thousands of unseen hazards.
But I was always taught when I was having flying lessons, you always have to know your position at any given time in relation to hazards and emergency landing places, and I think the principle holds true for boating too.
And seeing as these expensive boats have chartplotters and depth sounders as standard what excuse is there for driving onto rocks in clear weather, unless you have a motor/steering problem.
It seems to me that many owners just don't take the time to understand the equipment they have at their fingertips.
Then we had a guy the other week with a P38, who noticed the starboard motor ran a little warmer than normal so thought he'd check the header tank, after filling it with 20 liters of water he began too wonder how it could have got so low without seriously overheating...!
He'd poured the water into the oil filler, luckily he had the sense not to start the engine, so we goat it back on one engine and sucked the water out which lay at the bottom of the sump, then we changed the oil and ran it up to get it hot and changed it again, he was lucky as it could have been very expensive, but so often I go onboard and find the handbooks and manuals still in their plastic envelopes never opened.
I guess the owner is too busy making his millions to bother with mundane things like instruction manuals.
Still it keeps us busy and pays our bills...!