Knucklehead of the week award goes to . . .

[sailon46]

In reading Knucklehead's description it reminded me of something similar.
Retrofitted a Catalina 42 in 1999 to sail to Mexico Yucatan from Houston, in 1999 Thanx Giving time. I also took my steering cables off the sheaves to the Marine Store and the owner made me exact copies. I put the cables on the boat, and as I am pulling out of the slip when I turned the wheel to starboard the boat came to port. When I turned the wheel to port it came to starboard. Anyway no damage but by asking the owner my dilemma he asked me if I had forgotten to cross the cables. I said what crossing. Anyway it happens to all of us. It is called experience.
Ernie on the Mary Jane

[jimisbell]

I purchased a Gulfstar 36 that had the throttle cable reversed. To correct it would be a major problem so I left for home with it backwards. Coming out of the slip one of th "19 lines" that secured it was not taken loose (the line went straight down into the water with lots of slack and then back up to the bow....) and we came up hard on it just as we were about clear of the slip. I pulled the throttle back and the engine roared. Took about 5 seconds to switch my brain and get things under control. It was 1400 miles to home port. By the time I got home I had retrained my muscles to the incorrect throttle. I was afraid to now correct it because I would again have to retrain......LOL

[Tom1340]

What kind of routine maintenance required disassembling the prop?
Were you attempting to change the pitch or something else? My annual maintenance consists of greasing the maxprop and putting on a new zinc, neither of which requires disassembly. Am I missing something?

[IslandHopper]

Originally Posted by David1033

I always thought the 'going astern' sound signal was one long and three short blasts?

Been pedantic here, but there is no sound signal for 'going astern'........

[argonauta1]

Did a circumnav on a max prop. Never got it reassembled incorrectly but . . . . it is easy to do with the results you report. You are not alone; I know one or two others having made the same error. Only way to get it right for sure is to use some tape marking the correct configuration. Only way to recover from incorrect assembly is to haul out and redo it. Time consuming and expensive but the tranny cannot spend a season in reverse! Besides, the ratios forward and reverse are diffident in most trannys. Other hugely important point is to reassemble so as to have the desired pitch. Easy to get that wrong too. Use the Max prop supplied handbook!

[justlearnin]

Years ago I knew a guy that blew up his motor in in a mahogany motor boat. He put in a wrong direction drive motor and after a couple hundred hrs blew the trans. Apparently it didn't like the abuse because it had straight cut gears in reverse ... So it had a loud wine in reverse.. then drive... So I was with him when it blew.. at night in the st. clair river (very high current) oh and of course he had no paddles..... Yah good times. fix it right away. or you will end up Not reversing and power into a dock...

[Ward Person]

My shift is backwards, the Po said the helm was replaced with a nice Epson.
Many smart people tried to fix, I checked, back is forward, forward is reverse.
Have marked the helm.
Have the habit of planning 100 feet ahead of boat from unloading fish in open sea, always have fenders out, or the tender having plenty out.
Always a chance of screwing up.

[argonauta1]

Oh yeah re Tom1340: Changing the cutlass bearing dictates prop removal.

[svmariane]

Regarding the idea of visible Nav warnings:

Daytime - I would suggest flying the DELTA flag:

"I am maneuvering with difficulty; keep clear".


Nightime - I would suggest using the red-over-white-over-red light combo:

"Vessel Restricted in Her Ability To Maneuver".


BTW - The Austria national esnign we proudy fly is three, equal sized, horizontal bands: Red over White over Red. We joke that we are always difficult to manuver!

[Jimmyhenry]

Three short blasts means “I am engaging reverse gear”. Still appropriate when continuing to reverse.

Another thought. Sailing back from Tonga bringing back a very dodgy boat a friend had bought there the gearbox in forward gave up. We had zero wind and were stuck in the middle of a weather hole. Ended up reversing the boat for hours. The engine mounts appeared to be unhappy as after about 5 hours it felt like the motor was going to shake loose.
Eventually took us 12 days to get to Opua, NZ.
Pete

[Togreenfeet]

Originally Posted by JPA Cate

Charlie, have it fixed before you go. One's habits for driving the boat are just so ingrained that having that backwards will make you crazy, and you will react by habit and muscle memory if something goes wrong.

It is okay to use reverse for long periods, but to me that isn't the real issue.

Ann

I echo JPA Cate. When I was a kid my father had a motorcycle he said had a “Suicide Throttle” it worked in reverse. Roll it backwards, it slowed down, roll it forward was giving it gas. So he puts it up for sale.... I was born (1960) A man came over to try it out before buying it. My dad explained it in full detail. The man took off on the bike, went to slow down by rolling the throttle forward, which sped it up and he slammed into the back of a dump truck. He was hurt very bad, but it totaled my dads bike! Habits..........

[guitarrich]

My lovely new feathering prop arrived in Marmaris just hours before the rigidly enforced splash time. But as I finished the installation, I noticed, actually visually noticed the pitch was the reverse of my old fixed item. A phone call to the supplier confirmed they had screwed up.
I splashed anyway, checked with gearbox manufacturer, (confirmed direction of rotation made no difference in this box) and ran for a few days with a reversed lever. No issues.
(I once did a similar thing on a motorcycle when the throttle “pull” cable snapped. I was able to swap over the “push” cable such that the throttle worked the opposite way around. Now that was challenging, until the impoverished youth that I was could afford a new cable!)
Anyway, back to the boat - eventually I just swapped the cables over on the morse lever cam. Happy ever after!

[RaymondR]

Originally Posted by svmariane

Regarding the idea of visible Nav warnings:

Daytime - I would suggest flying the DELTA flag:

"I am maneuvering with difficulty; keep clear".


Nightime - I would suggest using the red-over-white-over-red light combo:

"Vessel Restricted in Her Ability To Maneuver".


BTW - The Austria national esnign we proudy fly is three, equal sized, horizontal bands: Red over White over Red. We joke that we are always difficult to manuver!

I tend to the opinion that any signal of any sort would have been superfluous.

Prior to my desperate resort to reversing I had been tacking up the channel with full main and genoa. It gets pretty busy there in the morning with tourist boats going out to Green and Fitzroy Islands and the reef. One of the large multihull jet boats insisted on passing me on the correct side of the channel just before I was about to tack and passing around my bow, left the channel and started spewing mud out of his jets. There was plenty of room on the wrong side as the channel is wide enough for large cruise and cargo ships.

It was quiet entertaining and ended OK but could have been serious with a foot less water.

[EWOL Props]

Don't use the reverse to proceed forward, you will risk to overheat the gearbox and the engine and burn gaskets or more serious issues.
If you don't have any other chances move the boat at low rpm, check the temperature regularly and think about stopping every half hour for some minutes.
As for fixing the issue, check first if cables have been inverted, if not then you have to haul the boat again, reopen the Max-Prop and set it again paying attention to the letters and numbers.
Some (but few) professional divers are able to do the job underwater but certainly is not an easy task on that model

[svmariane]

Originally Posted by RaymondR

I tend to the opinion that any signal of any sort would have been superfluous.

Yeah, I understand. But on the other hand by displaying/using the proper signals and adhearing to COLREGS a vessel would be leagally right - albeit perhaps "dead right" should some ignorant/adament/idiot proceed sans caution!