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stories:steering_malfunction_2008

Steering Malfunction...

Re: V 10 Anyone????
Larry Goolsby

02/13/08 #4111

On Sunday, 4 of us left Marine Park for a trip down to Govornor's. There was a S wind and a WSW swell coming in making the wall quite challenging. At Clarke's Point, Brian B. spotted a dark ominous cloud headed our way and said “nice knowin' you guys” and headed back to his truck. The other 3 idiots continued on to Govornor's. Upon reaching Govornor's, we peeked around the rock to see a monster (big black storm) and made a unanimous decision to head north and do a downwind run. The rides were great but the monster caught us before we could get past the island. Dean made the comment “I don't think that it can rain any harder than this”, and it did. The waves (not big but fun) were driving us towards Clarke's wall and just as we neared the point, one of the boats suffered steering failure. I won't name the boat to protect the manufacturer (4 letter word that isn't H-U-K-I). Luckily, Dean happened to have a small section of inner tube tied in a tight knot on his rear bungee. So all 3 boats went side to side in the slop coming off the wall as Dean hung onto Mike's boat and I hung onto Dean's. Dean couldn't reach the piece of inner tube to untie it so I un-did the knot and passed it to Dean who then jambed it between the hull and rudder on the unnamed watercraft. There really needed to be 3 boats to pull this off in the chop since we were able to stabilize each other. Dean wouldn't have been able to reach under Mike's boat without Mike and I holding his boat. With the rudder in a locked position, it was still hard to manuver the mystery boat in those mixed up waters and it took us an hour to travel the 2.5 miles back to the park.

Mike still broached on several occasions and went in swimming once just to rinse that pesky fresh water off his hide from the rain. Conditions were mostly calm when we had left the park and did pick up once we hit the water. It was close to 44 F so I didn't wear my drysuit and the heavy rain made it feel like it was 34 F. It was the a combo of heavy rain, wind, and dropping our feet in the water frequently that made Dean and I chilled. Mike did 1 or 2 huli's on top of this and he was probably the most chilled. Dean and I stayed warmer than Mike because we were able to paddle at a higher cadence. Mike's cadence was hampered with the fact that his paddle was also his rudder. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
LG


Re: V 10 steering problems
doncraigdesign

02/13/08 #4116

So Larry G., what would you say went wrong with the unnamed ski's steering this time? Was it a broken string or some other hardware problem? Enquiring H-ski paddlers would like to know.

Cheers,
Don


Re: V 10 steering problems
Larry Goolsby

02/13/08 #4117

Aauuggghhh. I'm not touching that one. Didn't see what happened and had no desire to ask. (I'm bettin'it was hardware but you didn't hear that from me).
LG


Re: V 10 steering problems
Dean Bumstead

02/13/08 #4119

It was a loose nut, and not the one paddling - Dean