Boat Engines

Over Easter Weekend, I had a good lesson on how an engine works.

Sarah and I headed up to Lake Hamilton with Jason and Melinda Knott to Melinda’s Mom’s lake house. The Mathis’ met us there as well. At the lake house was a 1991 Bayliner Classic with a 1991 Mercury engine. Upon arrival, we got the boat down from the lift. It started up right away and we went for a quick cruise Friday Night. And then trouble started the next day.

Saturday afternoon we cruised over to a little cove to to anchor down and have lunch on the water. We finished our lunches and decided to head back to the house. Grrrr. Gruuppppp. Uppppp. Nothing. Upon inspecting the engine, we couldn’t get it started. We flagged down a lady and man on a jet ski who were kind enough to tow us back to the house.

At the house we got down to business and started inspecting the engine. We took off the spark plugs and cleaned them out. Checked the oil, carburetor and lines. We grabbed a can of starter fluid and sprayed it into the carburetor and that still didn’t work. Finally, we took a break for about an hour to burn some leaves on the property. We came back to the boat, pushed the throttle line (For some reason, there wasn’t a choke by the steering wheel or throttle) to give it a little gas while trying to start the engine. It started, but then died. Jason then grabbed some fuel stabilizer and put that in the gas tank. Walah. It started up with a little help from pushing the throttle line in. And that Saturday night at about 7:00 with the sun going down, we did some slalom skiing on a lake that was absolutely still. Perfect.

Sunday Morning comes and we go on another cruise with everyone in the boat. As we are changing out tubers, the boat died and wouldn’t start back up. So we went back to our usual trick of pushing in the throttle line. This time, the throttle line broke. Upon further inspection, we found out that we could still start the boat and power it by lifting up the throttle lever even though the throttle line was broken. So Chad Mathis drove the boat while Jason controlled how fast we went from holding the throttle lever on the back.

We cruised over to the marina, but the maintenance guys were gone since it was Easter Sunday. And so off we went across the whole lake back to the house with Chad driving and Jason controlling how fast we went. Overall, it was kind of a frustrating experience. But I am almost glad that it happened. I don’t know much about engines, but after this experience, I feel I now know what to kind of look for, at least when it comes to a boat engine. And our conclusion as to why the boat would stop randomly…bad gas.