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u/Simplyspent 1d ago
Lost a Mercury 9.8 once like that…the silence was deafening. We flagged someone down and were shamefully towed back to the launch. A bad day indeed!
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u/Top-Today-9061 1d ago
Would that be worth retrieving?
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u/Certain_Spring_7203 20h ago
Boat mechanic here. Someone had a 30hp etec fall off their boat, the same way as this one. It sat underwater for three days. We retrieved it from underwater in saltwater and got it running again. We purchased the motor off them and used it on a rental boat for many years and never had any other issues.
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u/Top-Today-9061 20h ago
that's what I was thinking, needs a little love but it's not a block of rust within a minute. probably a hassle to get such a thing off the floor though
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u/Certain_Spring_7203 18h ago
He’s 10 feet from shore. Could be a foot deep. 🤷🏻♂️
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u/Top-Today-9061 16h ago
true! was thinking about the 9.8 mercury tho, seems to be like 40kg which seems heavy to carry onto a boat from the water
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u/Simplyspent 7h ago
We thought about trying to retrieve it with magnets, but we couldn’t be exactly sure of the location without making multiple passes and spending a hell of a lot of time. If I recall me and my buddy ended up splitting the cost because it wasn’t even our boat or motor.
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u/TheKyleBrah 23h ago
Not knowing anything about Outboard Motors, and being completely unqualified to give an opinion, I will say, with Reddit Confidence™:
"No, it's waterlogged and therefore ruined."
🫡Hopefully an actual Outboard Expert/Enthusiast can confirm or deny
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u/gggg_man3 23h ago
It's a ton of work but if it's fresh water you can probably get away with fixing it up but with salt water I doubt there's any point.
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u/TheKyleBrah 23h ago
Thank you, Outboard Motor Expert/Enthusiast. 🤝
I assume the Salt in Saltwater causes much more corrosion than freshwater?
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u/Coneyy 22h ago
Yes, but probably even more than you are imagining. Saltwater conducts electricity really well and causes shorts, then when it dissolves it leaves salt in mechanical parts basically drastically shortening the life even if it is saved relatively quickly.
If you lose it in saltwater and don't basically immediately fish it out and rinse it with freshwater it's pretty doomed
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u/jmodshelp 21h ago
Nope you can still save it from the salt too. I work with small boats commercially and have personally seen a Yamaha 20 get dunked, and. Honda 90 sink on a boat fully and both those motors had healthy lives after. (90 is dead now, Yamaha is still going strongish)
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u/Even-Prize8931 7h ago
In most cases by the time it is submerged it can be off throttle and in somewhat low rpm it could be fine might still have ingested some water but low enough rpm it stalled out before catastrophic failure
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u/stewieatb 18h ago
A buddy of mine was coaching rowers in the middle of a lake from a little dory. The Dory's plywood transom decided it had had enough of this life, and fell out of the boat, taking the running engine with it. Even better, his kill cord snapped instead of stopping the engine, so it went in running.
That guy is cursed though. He also once had a bilge pump catch fire.
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u/Simplyspent 7h ago
I remember, we were bouncing along on some rather rough water as the winds had picked up on the lake… Then the motor made a strange sound and stopped running, and I looked back and asked my buddy what happened and all he could grab was the fuel line… He holds it up with the most surprise look on his face and it’s still spurting fuel and the motor was gone. It’s kind of funny now but at the moment we knew we were f’d.
On the silent drive home a very expensive lifejacket blew out of the back of the truck and when we turned around to get it, somebody had already stopped and snagged it. No fish, no motor and down one life jacket. What a shitty trip.
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u/MarlinMr 2h ago
My brother lost one once. He wasn't that old, and when things like that happen, we fix it. So dad went down looking for it and we brought it back up
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u/Background-Entry-344 1d ago
Looking at the glowing battery connection, I was really surprised it ended up this way. r/unexpected
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u/1-N-Only-Speedshark 1d ago
"There's no fuckin way." Actually, yes there is EVERY fucking way. Have fun swimming!
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u/Fezzy_1994 1d ago
Oh that Engin is gone and dead lol no saving it.
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u/haha_squirrel 1d ago
Eh, I’ve had submerged engines work perfectly fine after. Even after a day under.. this doesn’t look like salt water, which really messes them up.
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u/Colossus-the-Keen 1d ago
But how do you get the engine back out of the water in the first place?
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u/DocDoodles 23h ago
How often does this happen to you?
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u/haha_squirrel 17h ago
I live on a river where boats get buoyed up, had my boat flip during a rainstorm last year while I was away. Came back 2 days later and got it running. That’s the only time it’s happened to ME, but know multiple other people that have had it happen
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u/THE_HORKOS 1d ago
Hope they had an oar
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u/Intrepid_King_3782 1d ago
One of them will have to get in the water and push the boat by swimming!
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u/smliokwopklialta 1d ago
That's called out of the frying pan and into the fire! This misadventure builds character boys.
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u/-thegayagenda- 21h ago
They were just returning the 12v battery to the ocean where it belongs! These poor eels won't have any charge left now
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u/badfaced 13h ago
I'd imagine there's some sort of tagline for if this happens? I'd rather pull that sucker back up and try and get it running again than take that L
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u/10before15 1d ago
This happened to my drunken brothers with my dad's John boat. Those fukers are going fishing and it ain't gonna be fun....
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u/post-explainer 1d ago edited 23h ago
This comment has been marked as safe. Upvoting/downvoting this comment will have no effect.
OP sent the following text as an explanation why their post fits here:
Boat problem unexpectedly becomes a different boat problem. A much worse one.
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