Hit an underwater thing

echandler1971

I was on the maiden voyage for the season. I was traveling from my winter marina to my summer marina. I wasn’t but 1 mile from the winter ‘marina when I hit something underwater. My starboard outdrive went completely nuts and the engine started going crazy. There was a terrible smell of burnt plastic. There was black stuff coming out in the water. I opened up the engine compartment, and I could hear water pouring in by the bucket. I managed to limp back one mile on the port engine with no power steering. 

I made it back into the slings, but my transom assembly is blown  out. Thank god for the bow thruster (Rinker 360). Mind you I replaced my transom assemblies two years ago and the outdrives last year. . 
Insurance is supposedly covering it all. No deductible. Still, I’m shellshocked. 

echandler1971

grouch0jr

Horrible luck. Glad you made it back safely.

captkevin

Good thing you were able to make it back to the marina. 

LaRea

Ugh.  I'm glad to hear your bilge pump was able to keep up.  What a rotten day.  

aero3113

WoW, could’ve ended way worse!

earl1z19

That's a wicked crack! also my worst fear. 

rasbury

I can't tell from tge picture- is the boat transom itself busted out or the merc stuff? Crazy, glad your family is safe.

davidbrooks

@echandler1971 glad to hear you made it back okay. I had something similar happen a few years back. I was going in reverse, and hit something and it completely snapped the out drive off. It was literally only Hanging On by the bellows. When I got hauled out they told me that little piece of rubber was the only thing that kept the boat from sinking.

echandler1971

Still dealing with insurance heII. Progressive adjuster doesn't understand salt life. He saw "multiple layers of paint" on stuff I said was basically new, because it was all basically new. I had to send him pictures of the parts on the boat before they scuffed up the sheen and fancy factory paint and painted it over with black antifouling spray paint each season. They will need to yank the engine, again, to replace the TA. I'm hoping to get this done quickly. I've seen the process already in detail.

earl1z19

In my experience the Progressive adjusters really don't understand the marine products they insure. He will to want to rebuild rather than replace. His 1st assessment is going to be way low and be missing parts. Have your service guy meet with him and go over what's required to get it back to original condition. I ended up paying out of my pocket to have my situation fixed in a reasonable amount of time and then Progressive sent me a check after we came to an agreement on the value of the damage less my deductible. In return the increased my rate by more than double the following year, not sure the two are related though....