Bigg J

I haven't been running offshore for very long and haven't seen a whole lot. Figured some of you salty veterans would have some killer stories.

offshore64

hydraulic steering went out in the gulf the 2ndday after i had bought my boat...not really crazy but it wasnt too fun

Bigg J

I know the feeling, the first time I took mine out the steering cable busted in the bay at night coming home from dinner. Had the wife with me, she was about to freak out. I've got twins so we made it home by working the throttles.

offshore64

we had to get the guys that do the para-sailing stuff at the flora bama to come tow us in with their inflatable boat. i wasnt too happy...but the guy i bought it from helped pay to get it fixed which was great...:clap very nice guy

Bigg J

Yeah the brokerage and the previous owner paid fer mine, made my day better.

pappastratos

This one is a crazy experience, I had repaired a damaged bass boat, we were excited to use the boat after I had worked on it for 1.5 years! Ihad to replace the entire steering assy, we lauched the boat, left the dock &and the steering was backwards ! I was determined to use the boat that day, so I learned how to steer it backwards, turn the wheel left to go right !! It was a easy fix after I got it back home,,,

Telum Pisces

This is copied from my post (Sept. 2007)on the old forum when I almost sunk my boat.

Ok, now that yesterday is over, I can breath a sigh of relief and talk about the situation. I have a 1802 Trophy WA. I am the second owner of this boat. Yesterday was rough as hell but we went out to Ft. McRae anyway. Well we decided to put in at the old Nichols Seafood ramp over here in Milton and make the long journey to McRae. I live in Milton. Well about the time I passed NAS Pensacola, I had to pull the throttle back a bit to slow down because the chop was getting a little much for my boat. And I noticed the boat was running a bit sluggish. As a slowed down, all of sudden I felt water come rushing by my feet. I look back and about pissed myself. There is water (about 4" worth)on the back portion of thedeck. This means that my entire bilge is full underneath the deck. The 1802 Trophy's are not a self bailing deck. I throttle back and then think, what the hell am I doing throttling back. I should be heading to the nearest shore NOW. Try to power back up on plane and she almost does not make it back on plane due to the weight of the water in my boat and I had to leave the helm and go to the bow just to get back on plane. Then I make it to Ft. Pickens and beach the entire boat. Open my cabin only to find a foot or more of water in there also. The bilge was going but wasn't doing it's job good enough. Reach down into the bilge only to find a bunch of junk in my bilge pump. Clean that out and the water finally starts to go down. It took over 20 minutes to get all that water out.

Now, where the hell did that water come from. I wasn't about to go anywhere without knowing where the water was coming from. Well the previous owner had re-rigged a washdown pump at one time. The pump no longer worked, so he simply pluged the hose coming from the pickup underneath the boat. Well, because of the beating I took from the choppy waters, that makeshift plug that was in that hose came out and the water pickup underneath just started to fill up my boat from who knows when on my trip yesterday.

Got the water out, pluged the hose with a more permanent solution and enjoyed the rest of the day at McRae with the family.

I never again want that sinking feeling while on a boat. That was the worst day on the water that I have had yet and hopefully I will not have to experience something like that agian on the water. So just a friendly reminder to check all avenues of water entry into your boat often, like livewells, raw water washdowns, etc...

jewfish

Batteries shorted out 40 miles out of Ft. Pierce around10pm once. Seas were calm but quickly got really rough and we were in the middle of some nasty thunderstorms. Around 4 am, the Coast Guard finally got us a tow. It was a long tow ride back in 7' seas but I put out a wahoo line anyways and got a cuda.:sick

Ocean Man

I will copy and paste as well:

<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">Woke up a little before <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comffice:smarttags" /><st1:time Hour="4" Minute="0"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">4:00a.m.</st1:time><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"> and started to get the boat ready. We left out with a crew of 4-My Dad, His friend Mike, my uncle James and me. We had a dozen live pinfish waiting for us in a trap and we had bought a box of squid from Outcast on the way to the ramp. On the way out in the morning, the wind was not blowing at all and there was just a little bit of residual swell coming from the south. So we decided to head out to the Yellow Gravel area after some big Grouper. We ran into a dense bank of fog on the way out that slowed us down a bit. I guess it was a bit of foreshadowing that the swells in the fog looked huge because you could not see them coming to well but they were really pretty small. We made through the fog then it cleared up for a while then we hit another patch of fog that was not that bad as we approached the spot about 40 miles out. When we stopped the wind and current were not doing anything so we decided to drift instead of anchoring since the boat was not moving hardly at all. As I was getting things ready they all dropped down some pinfish and the bite was on immediately. My dad hooked up on a monster grouper that pulled the 6/0 out of the gimble and the butt of the rod flew up and knocked him in the jaw and he barely was able to hang on to the rod. He got it off the bottom a little ways and the hook pulled, both of the other guys lost fish as well. So I moved the boat back over the spot and we all dropped down but this time nothing was doing so we tried to catch some bigger baits with little success. Well the wind picked up from the South so we decided to anchor. We could not get a consistent drift but we had a bunch of rocks marked in the same area so we kept moving the anchor around to get on the spots. We finaly caught a couple 1.5 to 2.5lb Mingo's for bait and as soon as one hit the bottom a big Grouper would be on but it was just not our day as they kept getting off. Well we decided to run about 10 miles North to another ledge in the Yellow Gravel area where we knew that we could at least catch some bait to fish with. As we approached the spot the cold front was bearing down on us. It was pretty amazing to see, it was clear and sunny where we were but the front was coming quickly from the West as a straight wall of clouds. We slowed down enough to feel that the wind had shifted from the South at about 5 knots to North at about 20 knots with gust to 30 and a large change in temperature so I layed the hammer down headed for home. Once we got about 22 miles from the pass the wave had gotten just plane nasty and we were in way over our heads. The waves werethe biggest I've ever been inand verrrrry steep. We took 100 or so waves over the bow with about a dozen being bad enough to go over the bow up the cabin over the windsheild and dump several gallons of water on my head as I was driving at a speedy 4mph. All it would of taken was 1 mistake and it would have been all over. We did not get out of the real bad waves untill we got about 8 miles from the beach and let me tell you that was the most intense 14 miles of my life. My dad was puking in the back of the boat because it was way to dangerous to get it over the side. The next 7 miles were sloppy to say the least but gave a little more room for error, and we were not able to run good untill we got about .25 miles from the beach. The whole way in I kept hearing my crew talk about being freezing but I had to much adrenaline pumping to get cold the only way I knew it was cold is because my jaw was freezing up not wanting to move. But in the end we made it in withangels <SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">over our shoulders. Final tally for the day 4 very releived guys with 1 Gag Grouper, 2 Mingos, and 2 Scamps and my dad caught and released our first moray eel. This morning I feel fine other than a sunburn and some sore muscles. I need to call my dad and check on his jaw as he took a pretty good shot that was still hurting him when we got home. Other then that I am ready to go again hopefully next time with some better seas.<BR style="mso-special-character: line-break"><BR style="mso-special-character: line-break">

Bigg J

Nice stories. Tuna Man, thats pretty crazy dude.