SAFETY AT SEA, tell your story and what you have learned

[RiskTaker]

Alright, here is a topic that I have been interested in for a long time.

Let's use this thread to tell one, or more, of your personal adventures at sea where there was an underlying lesson to be learned from that experience. The idea is to provide lessons learned such that other fishermen can improve their own safety, based upon your experiences.

OK, I will go first. Bilge Pump Configuration 101:

This story is from 1992. We had stocked the sailing vessel, "RiskTaker" , a 12 meter Catalac Catamaran, full of provisions at the end of February and early March in preparation for a one month cruise through the Abacos. We were held up for a few days pending a window to make the crossing to West End, G.B. Our window opened on a weekday and we departed at 9 p.m. from Boca Inlet with a nice westerly wind, a light fog and the moon was lighting up the sea. What a glorious departure! The trip started beautifully: we were setup wing on wing with both Yanmars HP 35s running at 80%. Back then we used SatNav and a ChartMap to get our fix and we were good on crosstrack between waypoints, running just a little south.

While underway we noticed the engine compartment bilge pumps were running every 10 minutes or so. This was a little faster than the normal conditioned observations.

Lesson 1 - We had known that the exhaust baffles (Stainless steel) had a few pin hole leaks, but due to the time schedule and perhaps expense, we did not replace these beforehand; hence, a little bit of exhaust water was leaking into the bilge already, both sides were leaking. Not a problem as long as the bilge pumps are working while the engines are on, right?

Around 2 a.m., everybody is asleep except for the man on watch. I was to pumped up about this trip to sleep but I was laying down in the cockpit area. Adam opens up the port engine cover and sees that the compartment is full of water, within 4 -6 inches of the air intake. Yikes, :shock: I watch him as he immediately pulls the fuel supply handle which is accessed from under the cover. I'm wide awake now!
We check out the circuit breaker for the bilge pump and notice that it has tripped. We reset the breaker and notice that it trips again after about 15 seconds. Again and again. With all the saltwater in the bilge we suspect that there was a short somewhere to cause this and agree to leave it go until we get to port. (The ocean started flat but was steadily building.)

Around 4 a.m. the winds are building and changing towards the northwest. We take down the whisker poll since the jib sail is no longer powered up in that position. We change course slightly to keep the jib powered up. Around 5 a.m. I decide to peek into the starboard engine compartment. HOLY S.... , this one is full of water now, too! This one is not as bad so we do not kill the motor. Adam is resetting the breaker but we can only get about 10-15 seconds before it trips and then almost immediately after a try or two. Adam gets a brand new spare bilge pump out of the box while I scramble to get my tool box and procede to strip down a household extension cord and crimp it onto the spare pump wires. We have spare hose on board too, so I clamp a 10 ft. piece onto the Rule 2000. I climb down into the bilge and attach the wires to the battery terminals with Vise-grips, all the while being electrified while attaching the + terminal. This is not pleasant while standing in ankle deep saltwater, and that was while standing on top of the exhaust baffler, so there is a foot of water in here by this time. The pump is going but it is not making any significant headway. We suspect that there is no longer a small pin hole on the baffler, but more like a bigger seam leakage of exhaust water. I tuck a piece of carpet under the baffler and continue to stand on it to apply pressure and to hold the bilge pump in a good position for about another 30 minutes until we have gotten her under control. About that time we are arrive at the Jack Tarr marina at West End about an hour after daybreak. What a crossing! Then two more days in the bilge to clean up the mess. The adventure had only just started too!

Lessons 2,3,4,5.... - We realized how important it was to have some spare parts on board, bilge pump, wiring, hose and multiple vice grips. The biggest lesson we learned was just how vulnerable we were to have only 2 circuit breakers to control 4 bilge pumps. The port pump failure cascaded over to a starboard pump failure as well. After that we made it a clear point to be aware of this. For such a well built boat we became critical of that stupid little shortcoming.

The root cause of the failure was discovered as I retrieved the port bilge pump and noticed one of the tabs that clips the pump to the strainer had broken off and remained inside of the strainer. At some point this got jammed in the pump impeller and caused the breaker to trip. The starboard pump would have continued to work fine if it had power. It was the rough seas that likely enabled the tab to get jammed since the pump worked fine for months previous to this.

This was a series of simple failures that escalated into a more serious condition. Without some self help solutions available to us this could have turned into a situation where we may have needed to call for help.

Latent Lesson - You should always have independent circuit breakers for each of your bilge pumps. Although this was a design flaw (IMO), I was greatful to have had the opportuity to discover this first hand and learn from it.

[quack quack]

RT I have had the same thing happen to me. A little piece of plastic can almost sink a boat :shock: When I was growing up one of my first jobs on any boat was a engine room and bilge inspection every hour. It did not matter what type of boat, Headboat, Dragger,Sport boat it did not matter. It is better to fix a potential problem than deal with a disaster. Everyone on a boat should have a job and one of those jobs should be to check the level of water in the boat. This is a great job for a kid or a newbie it teaches them alot about the world around them and makes them feel like they are part of the team

[FishFinder]

Thought I would share my experience with you guys.....

Back in 99 was on vacation in Grenada with my Uncle. He just got a boat which he purchased used from a guy who had it sitting there for about year or two. A Mechanic (yeah right) perfromed a full service on the engine got it running good for us. So it's time to test this sucker out, got out of port at about 9:00 a.m Decided to go do about 2 hours of trolling of the coast about 5 miles out. Weather was perfect and everything was going to plan. Then all of a sudden, the engine starts to sputter, then cuts out, we get it started back for about 5 mins, then it died. So we took apart the carb only to find it was clogged with all sort of shit! because the boat had been sitting there previously with some gas that was now no good, It was a nice mixture of water, dirt and gas which we filled up with. The so called mechanic was suppose to check the tanks for us, but never did. So we are drifting by this time pretty good as the current is strong out there. No VHF, No Phone, No epirb, only one flare and a fishfinder (yeah very Dumb!). First Night and we were in the shipping channel, a very large cargo ship was heading our direction, shot off the flare only for them to change direction to the south east, so much for helping someone in need, never saw another boat within range for the rest of the trip.. Funnily enough, on the second night we had the anchor out to somewhat slow our drift down, and we had out a bait fish down there called a "rainbow" on a tip rod and woke up at about 3:00 a.m to hear the line going crazy, by the time I got to it it went slack, have no idea what that could have been. So to make a long story short, we dirft for a total of 3 days and 2 nights, on the third evening a private plane finally locates us about 38 miles from our original spot, then the US Embassy's jet rolled in shortly after the private plane Then the Coast Guard show up few hours later and tow us back, Pride surely bruised but absolutely happy to be alive!


Lots of lesson learned from that trip, one surely is never go out there with the attitude of, "It won't happen to me" Cause more often then not it's the smalls things which go wrong out there which can lead to disaster.

[swordfish123]

Worst experience I have ever had on the water with regards to near disaster was about a year ago in Miami. My dad and I just replaced all 4 Seconday Raycor Fuel Filters on our boat. We werent getting the performance we wanted so we switched them to allow more fuel to get through. We also installed water drain plugs to the bottom of the system to allow for easy draining of the seperated water.

Well project completed we went to sleep, woke up the next morning and headed out of Miami beach Marina. Right after we cleared the Sea wall the port engine dies. It is immediately clear we have a problem with the racor. I hop down in the engine room and check it out. Valve on, no water in there, nothin seems to be wrong. Try to restart....nothing. The Starboard engine dies while im in the engine room. Now we have a problem. The outgoing tide is ripping out towards the breakwall. First things first, I head up to the bow to release the anchor. Windlass is broken. S%#%. Dad is at the helm on the radio calling SeaTow or TowBoatUS and any vessel in the area...we are heading for the rocks.

I quickly dissengage the windlass and start feeing out rode as fast as possible. Its about 50ft deep and it doesnt look like we're going to hold. To make matters worse...there is a giant freighter coming right at us. We call the coast guard and alert them of our problem, so they call the ship to let him know. Not like it would matter, he was doing 20 knots, luckily he steered to our starboard. SeaTow/TowBoatUS and the Coast Guard are all "10-15 minutes out"

The hook finally catches within a boats length of the rocks. Please Hold. On par for miami, a bunch of a$$holes in their drug boats go flying by with huge wakes. We had words on the radio. Its a miracle the hook held, and finally SeaTow arrives.

Turns out while we were replacing hte filers the engines sucked in some air created a bubble in the fuel intake. The engines worked fine while they were still sucking on the fuel that was still in the engine, but once it tried to get more, all it got was air. We now always "bleed" the engines after chaning the racors to get rid of any trapped air.

[reelaffair]

Originally Posted by FishFinder

Thought I would share my experience with you guys.....

Back in 99 was on vacation in Grenada with my Uncle. He just got a boat which he purchased used from a guy who had it sitting there for about year or two. .

what was the name of that boat, most of my family lives there we own a sportfishing business there so do my uncles just wondering

[J.P Freeman]

ran out of oil 12 miles out, on the way in (4 am). 4-6 ft. seas, 19 foot century-doesnt go well.

lessons learned - always make sure you have enough oil.

[J.P Freeman]

fell asleep while out there, by myself. not smart. dont even remember falling asleep.

lessons learned-never forget red bull.

[J.P Freeman]

always remember your drain plug.

i have so many mis haps i could make this thread last for months. :lol:

[quack quack]

Sword123 install a valve between racors and your engines. It stops that problem and is good to have that extra fuel shutoff anyway.

[NSBsailsandtails]

First i will tell my story, happened new years day this year.

I was fishing a 16ft Dolphin Renegade (kevlar flats boat) with a 17 gallon fuel tank. The day before we were thinking about our range and my friend who owns the boat tyhouight he had gone there in his boat but we found out in the end it was his friends boat with more fuel capacity. We ran from tavernier to east cape and didnt catch shit. so we hit about 4 more spots on the way home and still didnt catch anything. Me and my friend are already about to kill each other from drinking all day and then we hit a channel through a huge sand bar called "twisty mile" and thats exactly what it is. we get 100 yrds into the channel and the engine dies. we start it back up and it dies again...... oh shit we are out of gas!?!?!? luckly i had a cell phone on me and we called a friend to come get us. meanwhile it is about 4:00 and we are a half hour from home. well my friends make it to the other side of twisty mile and they ran out of oil. wow one of us has gas and one of us has oil and we need 2 boats to get home. luckily we had a extra quart of oil and put it in our friends engine. by time they made it to us to get the gas it is getting dark and we are 12-15 miles from home and we have no spot light. luckily my friend had gps and we followed him home. we ran most of the way home with no nav/anchor lights so we could see our buddy infront of us. Pretty scary running 40mph with no lights and being surrounded by sand bars and half submerghed boats from the recent hurricanes.

Lessons learned:
when in doubt bring dummie jugs.
Always have atleast 1qt of spare oil.

To make the story more interesting, while we were waiting for our buddys i managed to chum up 5-10 sharks with a lady fish.

I work at a marina and i have learned alot from other peoples mistakes. ive seen people forget drain plugs and almost sink their boats.

We have had a dredge here for awhile now and ive seen 3 people run brand new yamahas into it. Damn near ripped the engine off 2 of the times and the third one almost ripped the transom off the boat.

[SteveMras]

My wife and I were on our way in to Ensenada after fishing albacore 60 nm off in our 20’ diesel powered Blackman center console. Virtually no wind, glassy conditions with a 3’ to 4’ swell to our stern, cruising 21 knots. Coming down a swell about 50 nm out and the bow digs in and kicks hard to port sending me all the way starboard to the full length of my left arm firmly hanging onto the upright of the t-top, my right hand on the wheel. In the process, my right hip slams into my wife standing next to me against the lean post. By the time I turned to look for her as I was still slamming towards starboard, she was gone overboard and all I see is the remnants of a splash. F$@K! As usual, she has foul weather gear on over several layers of clothes. I pull myself up, throttle back and turn to the side she went over, all the while praying that she pops up. I couldn’t lose her. A lot of people would be pissed at me and I would be devastated, but it was no time to panic. She popped up, waving a hand with her glasses in it. How she saved her glasses while going overboard, escapes me. I motored over and grabbed her. After setting her glasses on the bait tank behind me, I worked her to the swim step and hauled her in. Rather, the adrenalin was such that she flew in. No greater catch/save have I made. I gave her my clothes, leaving me with shorts and foul weather gear. It was a long, somber 3 hour run in from there.

That was the first day of a two-day Club tuna tournament. Needless to say, we did not fish the next day. To my surprise, my wife finished up the Club tournament circuit including back-to-back weekend marlin tournaments, finishing second in the overall standings. We have since bought inflatable PFDs which are worn while underway offshore. We will be buying some other safety devices such as GPS/EPIRB locators, strobes, etc. That said, I’m not sure I have my fishing partner for those lengthy offshore trips. She’ll probably have to work her way back into those as she is still quite traumatized from the event. For those who might be thinking it won’t happen to them, we have over 20 years of boating and fishing experience, including the capture of most all of the billfish species that swim in the Pacific from our boat(s). What I’m saying is that it could happen to anyone and it does in a instant. Better safe than sorry.

April, I know you'll never look at junk like this on the internet, but I love you all the same:

http://fishinghotpage.com/users/tmp/April611DVLPS.jpg