What is your worst day on the water?

My most recent bad day was last year, had a friend and his family up for the day to tube and pontoon. 20 minutes in the ski boat goes down, have to have a kayak come out then paddled to get the pontoon, towing the ski boat the pontoon quits shifting. 2 boats down in an hour no water sports that day, I felt horrible, they were going to stay overnight they ended up going home.

Back in the young and dumb days.
Buddy had a17’ tri-hull with a 100 hp Merc on the back. Followed the charter fleet to a hot bite about 30 miles down range

We’re happening. Catching fish, high fives amongst the crew. Then we noticed we were the only boat left in the area. Figured they caught their limit and went home.

Long story short, a storm warning was issued. Got beat to heck. Had a (green) crew member hang over the transom. Wave takes out the windshield, splitting the captains head wide open (10 stiches). Left me and the other guy bailing to keep the boat afloat . After what seemed like forever, the clouds part we finally made it back to the dock where we were greeted by an old salt (charter Capt) smoking a pipe. In his best James Cagney voice… didn’t think you all were going to make it.

I sunk a Jon boat on the Mississippi should have never put that 9.9 on a 10 x 28 boat with electric start and a battery in the back, transom tore out.

Years ago.

Some captains make it interesting.
A friend got a boat but didn’t have a tow vehicle yet so he asked me to go. His dad had a boat so I figured he probably knew how to drive one. Four people and a baby load into an old 15’ runabout, closed bow with windshield. We round a point and the waves are over 4’. His wife is yelling at him to turn around but everything is ok. We are doing 2mph. He then goes full throttle and the boat goes up a wave and spears the next one. The bow is fully under and The water is 1’ up the windshield. To my surprise the boat comes up on top. It has about a foot of water in it and we head for the ramp.

Rafting down a normally benign river. Rains had the river high and flowing much faster than normal but still no rough water. We got caught in a tree and got flipped. The current pushed us under the tree. My buddy managed to get a hold of something on the bank but I surfaced a couple hundred feet downstream toward the middle of the channel. Naturally not wearing life jackets but I surfaced near one so I grabbed it and started swimming for my raft. Couldn’t catch it. Another raft in the group finally caught up and fished me out. My brand new raft was hung up on the end of an island the last time I saw it.

One day in lake pontchartrain the wife and I were in or 16’ ski boat with a 135/t&t Johnson. There is a watering hole just in the yacht harbor entrance, so we were headed in when a 65’ footer came out, I had already slowed down and trimmed it in for the light chop but when the first wave raised the bow the next one put 2’ over the bow, and with no windshield we really took a bath. That cancelled the plans for the watering hole!

In my 20’s, my cousin and I and both our girls were on a lake in his bow rider. I was running the boat at a pretty good clip and misjudged a sizable wave we hit head on. He was in the bow seat. When the boat came back down, he stayed suspended in air. The bow bounced back up as he came down slamming him into the seat. Broke his back. He is a big dude and the paramedics had a heck of a time getting him out and in the ambulance, the floating dock didn’t help any. I raced back to the launch loaded up and headed to the hospital. I was a mess and lightly rear ended a pickup, but enough to ruin the front bumber of his beloved Camaro. Was a terrible day.
We are in our 60’s now and he has no back issues at all, thankfully.

Yeah, this night. https://forums.iboats.com/threads/my-boat-sank-part-ii.750533/

Found yet another corroded connection, just when I thought that I've replaced everything. Fuel pump relay, 4 hours to rewire everything yesterday.

Also, I feel zero obligation to keep everyone entertained/fed the whole time they're here, unlike my wife. You're coming to my place, eating my food, drinking my booze, going out on my boat. It isn't meant to be a five-star resort, you're welcome. Friends understand this and are happy to roll with the punches. I've got enough things to stress about in my life, this isn't going to be one of them.

I splashed my boat with the rack and pinion bolted in 180 degrees......

2 Steering rack stories.
When OMC would come every year for the technical update seminar they told of a boat sold in San Diego to a guy with the rack backwards. Time passed and when the boat cane in for routine service one of the mechanics corrected the steering. The owner then crashed the boat next time out.
A local dealer‘s mechanic replaced the rack backwards on an outboard. The guy picked up the boat on Saturday and on Sunday lost control and beached it in a bayou. He left the boat there and showed up Monday morning raising hell lawsuit bla bla. The owner then took off with a boat, found the boat and repaired the steering. When the lawyers “expert witnesses” examined the boat the steering was miraculously correct!

Scott Danforth said:

I splashed my boat with the rack and pinion bolted in 180 degrees......

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Did the same thing on my deep c with cable steering, embarrassing.

Maybe it’s just the airplane mechanic in me but I don’t consider a job done until I have made sure things act the way I expected after it is reassembled.

DeepCMark58A said:

Did the same thing on my deep c with cable steering, embarrassing.

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It was puckering at first....LOL

Forgot the drain plug on my float test after the restoration. Only time I ever have done that. Dad's yapping away on the phone "how aren't you here yet? I talked to you over an hour ago, it wouldn't take me this long." whole riot act. I said last thing on the checklist is to install the drain plug as I always do that before I leave. He said toss it in when I get here and in my dumbness I listened. By the time I got there I was so busy checking everything else I forgot. Had I not done that I would've saw the shift cable leaking before installing the engine for the first time. No one gets through with a perfect record I suppose.

Whilst doing a solo launch I left the bung out . By the time I had parked the trailer a small crowd had gathered and I did wonder what the attraction was ....until I saw my boat with a significant amount of water in it , a quick calculation and I figured I wouldnt have time to go get the trailer and remove boat from the water so I had to jump in the tide in front of an audience and fit the bung .
Oh yeah and then there was the day I wore boxers on a rough ride home .

Recreationally is a toss up but both on my grandparent's old 1948 46' Chris Craft DCFB. First one was the last time he hauled out at the marina at the head of the river. That moron was supposed to lower the railway trolley down just enough to soak the hull so it had time to let the wood swell. Instead he completely launched us off into the river. Committed at that point, so started the engines and got moving. We steadily went down, made it about halfway home and had to beach it. Tide went out, she was high and dry; tide came back in that evening and she was floating nicely like nothing ever happened. The other time was sitting at a marina on another river because the engines wouldn't start. Two of my uncles (mind you I have four who all consider themselves mechanics and zero actually are) show up. Their grand idea is to keep pouring gas down the carb throats (twin 413's) instead of troubleshooting WHY they weren't getting fuel. One time one of them got lazy and didn't put the flame arrestor back on. That's when it backfired, ignited and we found out that the installed fixed CO2 system actually worked. Singed couch and one uncle with burned feet who went overboard immediately. Then a real mechanic showed up and figured out fairly quickly that the fuel filter seals weren't sealing and sucking air.

Professionally, dozens of shipboard fires, almost getting launched into the water during a towing evolution, smacking a large propeller repeatedly into a coral reef, blowing up a generator, losing power & propulsion and coming dangerously close to running into an aircraft carrier.....nothing catastrophic to life and limb but definitely contributing to bad days.

I think dad's worst was when the steering pin snapped on his old boat. This was the old MC-1 splined steering pin and he was running about 50 mph. His buddy said "all I saw was white." Dad said it did a 360 in the footprint of the boat. How no one was thrown off he doesn't know.

Many years ago we were motoring alongside Longboat pass bridge and the captain decided he wanted to go out into the gulf so cut a hard left at close to wot we hit a little wave did a skip across the water and crashed into the bridge. I thrown over the side and cut my leg on what was probably the center console as it broke free trapping the captain or driver I should say the two other guys bailed out and the boat ended up on the beach still at close to wot with cap still trapped under the console. He tried to kill the motor and broke the key off so he had to pull the fuel line.
Its amazing that no one was on the beach at the time and I was the only one hurt. I had to swim with the currant to get back to shore and I just made before running out of beach to land on or I would have had a real big problem on my hands.