Crazy 2nd trip of the season! *Long*

[Zeal]

My patient/friend has a nice 30 Foot Riviera (I think the model is called Black Marlin) and this year the boat finally got fixed up and we are ready to pound the water. Unbeknownst to me, he's training me to be a backup captain besides being a mate (God forbid something happens to him). Last time I drove a boat was a 15' Anna Capri with no power steering or seats and it was over 20 years ago at the roughest waters of LI (I was about 8 or 9 years old). The boat I'm learning has dual diesel engines (important to note) with a bunch of gauges and features that I have no clue about or is fragmented since nobody taught me anything about mechanics or machinery.

Take about a 20-30 minute trip to go from the bay, through a canal, to the bay where we go to bang on some scup (my friend loves fishing for them). I drive about 60% of the way learning as we go.

Well we get into some nice sized 1 lb scup and for the first time in many years I catch a weakfish. My heart nearly stopped because my brain definitely did at what I landed (19" too!). We have our fun, go to head back in as the bite died.

Well driving in he goes to slow down because we have to approach the canal to be let through and the engines are not responding AT ALL. The boat is maintaining about 12 knots and we are hauling through a marina. Alarms are going off and all this noise, people cursing about leaving a wake, he tries to go in neutral, mashes the synchronizer, and even turns the ignition off and the motors are still going. He makes a big U turn in part of the marina and we barely clear it and head back to the bay where eventually the motors shut off. My friend probably hit everything on the controls and who knows what finally made the engines stop. No smoke or steam coming out or anything to suggest something abnormal.

The entire time hes nearly having a cardiac and oddly I'm just calmly watching how he is reacting to an emergency situation (pretty sure I just witnessed everything you could possibly do in all of 2 blinks of an eye as far as what to press and such).

One engine comes back on, the other doesn't. That's fine, it isn't overheating and we can get back with one engine. Bad news is that the canal is locked until the tide turns which is 6 hours from then. We tie to a floating dock, he has his foreman come pick him up so he gets his truck (mine is at the home marina). Killed time, filleted up the fish, and at 11pm we finally were let through. Get back to the dock and I have to pack my gear and do a 40 minute drive home. He lives on his boat so he just passed out.

Honestly, I wasn't scared even after the fact, I guess I have a lot of trust in him and the boat. Exhaustion was another story.

His mechanic looks at the boat and the list that I could get out of it second hand was: stuck fan belt, worn fan belt, an alternator needed to be replaced, and there was loose electrical wiring (whoever did the job last didn't even shrink wrap wires together and they were all loose). A trip after, the engines were running very hot and it turned out the impellers melted and chunks went into the chamber.

You learn a lot when things break or try to kill you. I thought it was very special how diesel engines will still go even with the ignition off.

All in all, catching that weakfish made all that other stuff worth the torture.