So we're coming back from Dobbins Island last Sunday and were about to round Sandy Point. I note there's a field of crab pots in the distance and plan to skirt around them. Then all of the sudden there's a thump! then a wubba-wubba-wubba-BANG-BANG-BANG! noise coming from below. Followed by various obscenities about crab pots. I keep a sharp lookout and didn't see it. I'm guessing it was an old ghost trap with it's float just below the surface. Nothing came to the surface after the incident.
I immediately put the engines in neutral. A check of the engine compartment showed no damage or water coming in, thankfully. I put the engines individually into reverse and the noise continued. For the starboard side it stopped after a bit of brief forward/reverse pulses. No such luck for the port side, the vibration and banging noise continued. It was clear there was not only some line but part of the trap must also have been pulled up into the port prop. We limped back to our marina on just the starboard engine, leaving the port in neutral. It was slow going as one engine will not get the boat up on plane. I was constantly looking back toward the main bilge pump through hull, hoping not to see water being pumped out. And none was.
I had visions of horrible docking hassles trying to get back into the marina on only one engine. Fortunately whatever was tangled in the port prop managed to partially work itself loose! You cannot imagine how relieved I was. I had enough use of the port engine to get back into the slip without trouble. There was still some vibration, but less than before and without the unnerving BANGING noises.
Here's why:
The surprise was seeing that the lines has gotten tangled on BOTH shafts. Bad enough to have worked both zincs loose. The bearings were pulled down the shafts into the strut cutlass bearings, wrecking them. Apparently the line worked itself off the starboard shaft but another remained tangled on the port side, as pictured. So now the props are out getting fixed and new bearings are being delivered. With luck that'll be the extent of the damage. I have one set of the zincs (no pix yet) and about a full 1/2" was ground right off the end of it, leaving a sliver of a collar where it slid under the cutlass bearing.
Since I wanted to avoid trying to go any big distances (rightly so having seen the zincs burrowed into the bearings) they had me take the boat to the ramp at the Matapeake state park; a straight shot across the Bay from our marina. I wanted to avoid going any further than necessary, not knowing what was actually wrong. Had I tried to go all the way around Kent Island it might have further wrecked the cutlass bearings and possibly caused a loss of the shafts.
As a side note, I had made several calls to two different divers and neither returned my calls. Must be nice to be so busy you can't even return calls. But given the state of the zincs and bearings it might've been inevitable to get it pulled. I'll have to wait and see how bad the bearings are. But I'll probably file an insurance claim on it. Still, the cost difference between having a diver do the work versus pulling it out is around $500. Anyway, just a side rant.
I took it across the Bay and actually managed to get it up on plane for a bit. The vibration was mostly only at low RPMs. Once I got to the ramp they brought over a hydraulically adjustable U-shaped trailer and had me maneuver onto it. To get it up the last 3 feet I had to give it a fair bit of throttle. It was a bit unnerving, especially with the guy's head just ahead of the anchor. But it loaded fine and luckily nobody else showed up needing to using the ramp. Here's the 348 on the trailer:
We drove a couple of miles (on the interstate) to their shop.
With any luck it'll be just the props, bearings and zincs. Shafts seem fine but it'll take getting it all back together to be certain. Hopefully we'll only end up losing just THIS weekend.
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Man oh man that sucks. I can no longer bitch about my uw lights not working.