The Fender Bender

We had a fender bender on Wonderstruck. No, this had nothing to do with the bridge issue. We were pulling away from the dock at Caribbean Jacks with quite a crowd of friendly boaters helping us with lines and waving us off. Kim was driving, we released the lines and the boat shot backwards into the piling. What was that?  Kim turned to pull us away and the boat turned backwards again, spinning out of control in the marina and hit the boat behind us. We got tangled in it’s dinghy, broke free and then spun around and hit that same boat a second time. The engines were roaring, everyone on the boat and on the dock was yelling and yet we hit that same boat more than once.  Timed seemed to drag on, the wreck proceeding in slow motion.  Kim put the new starboard engine in neutral, used only the old port engine and we were able to go forward out of the marina. We drove straight across the channel from Caribbean Jacks and dropped anchor. Once the boat was safely anchored we started assessing the situation. What in the world was that? I went forward, Kim took the throttles, tested the port engine forward, reverse, no problem. Then she tested the new starboard engine, forward=reverse, reverse=reverse. No wonder we ricocheted in that marina! Every time the new starboard engine was put in forward it shot backwards in reverse. The police came and looked at our boat and looked at the boat we hit. Fortunately there was no damage to the boat we hit, and our boat just had a divet of gelcoat/ fiberglass damage on the transom. Since it is considered a boat “fender bender”, no formal report had to be filed. But we still needed to figure out why this happened.

As Kim recently had bilateral Carpal Tunnel Surgery I got to play the part of Rosie the Riveter. I climbed down in the starboard engine and started looking at cables while Kim put things in forward and reverse until I found the problem. Here it was:

Missing Nuts

The bolts that hold the shifting cable in place were missing the nuts which had vibrated off, the cable was no longer in position, and thus no matter which way Kim shifted the throttle it went in reverse. I took several pictures and texted them to the mechanic that installed the engine and he was able to tell me how to fix it.

Bracket loose= Cable out of place

Fixed

The repair took most of the day so we spent the night that night on the hook, still anchored across from Caribbean Jack’s.

Our dinghy motor wouldn’t start, so we used the kayak to take the dogs to shore for potty breaks.

The next day we surveyed the boat for more damage and found this:

In the port engine compartment: one of the metal straps that holds the hot water heater in place broke off and was rubbing on the alternator belt.

Ben and I spent the next day trying to make a temporary fix for this. I tied a line around it, then used a hacksaw to cut away part of the steel strap. We then folded it underneath the hot water heater so it couldn’t hit the alternator belt. Then I used the dinghy anchor chain and replaced the rope with the chain and bolted it in place so that the hot water heater wouldn’t be able to fall backwards and hit the engine, and there wouldn’t be a rope close to the engine where it would get hot.  Not a long term fix, but good enough to make it 15 minutes down the ICW to the Halifax Harbor Marina.

With the shifter cable for the starboard engine fixed, the hot water heater support rigged well enough to travel a short distance, we went under the Broadway (International Speedway Blvd) bridge with the height marker measuring 63 feet without any problem and safely arrived at our new home base:  the Halifax Harbor Marina in Daytona Beach.