Interesting end of boating season.

Remediation

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Lake Cumberland KY - White Oak Community Dock
We are fortunate to have 2 Benningtons so we don't have to tow 3 1/2 hours to the lake house. This year the big boat broke down and is in the shop. We towed the 2015 down for Labor Day weekend as we had 13 people staying in the lake house for the 48th annual picking an grinning party. Left at 3 am Saturday morning to miss Cincinnati traffic. The boat trailer was twitchy on the way down. When passing a semi, the trailer would want to sway. I was thinking it might be the new truck because the whole way to Canada this summer it did the same thing. At dawn, we put the boat in the water and tied to the slip. Later that morning, we had three loads of people taking stuff to the ramp and loading the boat. I took the truck to the bottom of the ramp and off loaded stuff. Jill was bringing the boat around and I noticed a list of the boat. I am never not on the boat so I had not seen the boat out on the water. We had 10 people on it so "maybe too many people on one side." We anchor up and everybody is in the water. I float to the the back of the motor pod and the boat has a noticeable list. On the pod is a V shaped water deflector on each side. The starboard piece is under the water and the port side is 1 inch above water. We boat Saturday and Sunday. Early Monday morning with the ramp quiet we pull the boat up the ramp. The starboard rear chamber is sloshing water. There are only 2 chambers on the elliptical toon, so half the toon has water in it. We get the boat to the dealer in Cincinnati. I told them about some warranty issues and that I had water in the toon. The called me and said I have a 6" crack on the top rear of the pontoon. That means for probably for the last 2 years I have been dragging around hundreds of lbs of water at the rear of the boat and adding more as we boated. I have weigh slips from when I checked tongue weight when it was new. I will weigh it before I drain the water. I must have very little weight on the ball.
Upside is that Bennington is covering the pontoon, a bimini boot that was stitched wrong and a new playpen cover that had stitching falling apart.
Upside/downside is that service found my propshaft was bent. The bearing were still in good shape so the lower unit is OK . It is an expensive repair.
I hit a marker buoy that was floating 4" above the water about the 2nd time we had the boat out. It tweaked the SS prop a little bit (which I fixed) but it must have got the shaft also because that is the only thing I have hit.
We are fortunate that we did not lose the boat & trailer on the way back but I also drove the speed limit for the first time in a long time. It was never bad but it was not right. Also this might explain the 8.6 mpg towing.
Expensive September.:(
 
Great story, thanks for sharing. Good to hear Bennington is standing behind their warranty and that the bent shaft was discovered before it caused bigger issues.
 
Bummer on the crack and water in there. Luckily you found it at the end of the season so you have time to get it fixed before next season.
 
Darn, but glad you're on your way to having everything back shipshape!
 
That’s a bummer, but like Andy said, at least near end of season.
So ellipticals don’t have a separate nose cone? That’s technically the third chamber right, at least on mine there’s two toon chambers, then the nose portion???
 
Yes there is the nosecone. The big boat has 3 chambers plus nose cone. The elliptical toons have 1000 lb of extra buoyancy so how many lbs of water can fill the chamber? I will find out next week.
 
Damn when it rains it pours right???.....We went through the water in the tube scenario earlier this summer. The good thing was it was a quick fix. Drill a hole, drain the water out, add a threaded bung hole drain. The bad thing is they never found out where/how the water got in. Glad that everything is getting fixed. You mentioned your other boat....... Why is it in the shop???
 
I wonder what the downside to Adding a (Bung) drain plug could it would be from the factory. I guess this would only help in the advent of water in the rear section.

But back to your story. Funny how little things like your boat/trailer NOT towing the way you remember it is/was a early sign or tell tail to what was really going on.

Upside you had a good weekend and didn’t learn or have to worry about the cray or leak untill the weekend was over. Imagine you knowing about the crack b4 you left you would have been a nervous week the whole weekend. Ignorance is bliss glad a little water in the toon didn’t slow you down or lead to a bigger mis hap.
 
You mentioned your other boat....... Why is it in the shop???
The big boat has a 350 Mag Mercury I/O. I bought it used with a lot of hours on it. For the last 4 years it has had a popping in the exhaust at the 3000 to 3500 rpm range. I have had to Merc dealers and my KY local boat mechanic. Lots of money and no solution. Last fall, I checked into replacing the motor. Did not pull that trigger. Several weeks ago we were floating and the boat started but would not run past idle. Took an hour to get to the dock and loading on the trailer was almost impossible with no power. Did a google search and found out that Mercury had created a water cooled fuel cell for their I/O. The high pressure, low pressure fuel pumps, fuel regulator and some filters and screens are housed in the fuel cell and cooled by raw water. Problem is they painted the inside of the fuel cell. Guess what ethanol fuel does to paint. The paint dissolves and start clogging injectors.
Mercury has owned the problem. I am not the original owner of the boat. Mercury still is helping fix it. They are sending a lot of parts to the Merc dealer on them and I have to pay the labor.
I hope this fixes a nagging problem. I looked into replacing the boat last year but reality is the same boat now is twice the list price and 4 times what I paid for the boat.
 
I hope this fixes your nagging problem. What year is your boat? We have the 4.3L V6 Merc I/O. It was brand new when we bought it in 2008 on a 2004 boat. So we're in our 12th season. The only real problem we've had is the fuel pump went and of course they had to remove the engine out of its pod to replace it. We have meticulously kept up the maintenance. The boat runs great but we know it's not going to last forever. We have looked to replace our boat probably with an outboard but it's hard when our boat runs great (knock on wood) and the interior is in like new condition. Some days we say let's keep it til it dies. Other days we say let's sell it while it still has value. We'll reevaluate in the off season. We can sell it for what we bought it for in 2008. A new R with the equipment/engine that we currently have is 3 or 4 times what we paid for it. Ah decisions decisions.......
 
It is a 2008 RCW 2575. It came from the Nashville Boat Club. It had 620 hours in 3 years on it. I don't think it was ever covered. We have been replacing the seating as the stitching is falling apart. The real advantage of new would be not having to winterize the I/O. Even with repairs and inside winter storage I am spending less than 1 month payment on a new one. Also the boat gets used less than 10 times yearly. It still looks good and I love the I/O even though it's not really practical. It will last 10 years more easily.
 
It is a 2008 RCW 2575. It came from the Nashville Boat Club. It had 620 hours in 3 years on it. I don't think it was ever covered. We have been replacing the seating as the stitching is falling apart. The real advantage of new would be not having to winterize the I/O. Even with repairs and inside winter storage I am spending less than 1 month payment on a new one. Also the boat gets used less than 10 times yearly. It still looks good and I love the I/O even though it's not really practical. It will last 10 years more easily.
We love our I/O. It's the only engine we've ever had. Our bowrider had the carbureted version. So we are used to having it winterized. I had a kit I used to winterize our first boat with. Just run the 5 gallons of antifreeze through and killed the engine by fogging the carbureter. But yeah I won't miss the $300+ for the winterization and oil change/lower unit change if we got an outboard. We'll see.....
 
Update: Got the engine repairs done and picked up the 22' pontoon yesterday. On the way home I went to the CAT scale. I have the weigh slips from when I was checking tongue weight. The boat had 750lbs of water in the rear toon. 90 gals of water. There is a 6" crack on top of the rear end cap next to the weld seam. I suspect that the metal cracked from the heat cycle of the weld seam. I believe that it has been cracked for a long time. It towed a little weird last year. As more water got in the toon the crack got deeper in the water and started collecting more water.
The toon now has a hole and a crack.
An interesting fact I learned from the weigh slip. My 2018 Expedition Max weighs 700 lbs less than my 2015 Expedition EL did. 6060 to 6790.
Most has to be the aluminum body panels.
 
Update: Got the engine repairs done and picked up the 22' pontoon yesterday. On the way home I went to the CAT scale. I have the weigh slips from when I was checking tongue weight. The boat had 750lbs of water in the rear toon. 90 gals of water. There is a 6" crack on top of the rear end cap next to the weld seam. I suspect that the metal cracked from the heat cycle of the weld seam. I believe that it has been cracked for a long time. It towed a little weird last year. As more water got in the toon the crack got deeper in the water and started collecting more water.
The toon now has a hole and a crack.
An interesting fact I learned from the weigh slip. My 2018 Expedition Max weighs 700 lbs less than my 2015 Expedition EL did. 6060 to 6790.
Most has to be the aluminum body panels.
Wow! 90 gallons/750 lbs. of water in there. Unreal! (And I was crying about our 20-30 gallons in ours) So BOTH boats are fixed now right???
 
No, the big boat is still in the shop. Jill has 10 ladies coming to the Lake house next weekend. I will bring the Ohio boat back down and be captain for the day. I need to replace the garage door (1962 Vintage 16' x 7') so I will use the boat to transport It. Also, I will see how it trailers without 90 gallons of water sloshing around in the back of the boat.
 
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