Should have just left the boat on the trailer... Only had her about 3 weeks now, had some maintenance work done on her and got her back to make her maiden voyage with me as the new owner... Get to the lake Ontario beach boat launch, splash the boat, tie it off to a cleat on the dock, someone's wake comes in and the boat rips the cleat and board full of screws right out of the dock and a 3" nail right into my buddies calf... If that's not enough, the dock sentry fills out the incident report and calls the county sheriff marine patrol and the coasties.... Mind you we have not even left the dock, trailer is barely out of the water. Coasties show up first and acess the situation and decide to do a safety inspection... No violations! Meanwhile sheriff shows up takes report and acuses me of lying on the report and threatens me with a field sobriety test.... Boat is docked! Ok do it, I don't drink... So he backs down but takes all my info and files an accident report which is reported to the state and now will be on my record, so much for affordable insurance and a clean record, I have a CDL and have never had so much as a ticket, let alone an accident. While this is going on, as boat was idling, I failed to notice that the stbd engine is smoking like crazy, check the temp gauge...240!!! shut everything down and leave it sit while all the reports are filled out, then muscle it onto the trailer without starting it. Get home hook it up to the hose start the motor and she gets up to 175 to 180 and white smoke? Or steam? Is just pouring out the exhaust at idle. She goes to the mechanic Tuesday morning... Can't wait to see this bill... plus still haven't had her out yet.... Guess I am done for the year before I even started.... Like I said one of those days....

I feel your pain, your story is really unbelievable and for your first time out with your boat. Having to deal with the authorities is not usually a great experience and I wonder why these cowboys are so arrogant with there display of authority and no common sense or feelings for others, not all of them but many. I've had a similar experience when I bought my boat and dealing with people that were useless and crooks. I made many mistakes and hope that I have learned from them and the first thing is to get a marine survey and don't be afraid to ask questions and question work to be done and have it documented. I lost 2 years of boating, spent a lot of money and forever turned my wife off from boating. It is not a good experience being towed in every time you went out especially with the wife that you had to talk into buying a boat. Hope things work out for you and sorry to hear about your bad luck.

Thank for the words of encouragement, I did have a survey done and the issues found were negotiated into the sale, I have a very reputable, trustworthy mechanic that basically with me made the decision not to replace the impellers as we had an invoice from last fall when the previous owner had them done, the boat had not been used since then except for a water test... Good news is that what i thought was smoke is actually steam, hopefully no damage was done on the overheat and there is just obstruction from impeller parts... The coasties were great and very helpful, the county sheriff is another story... Coasties actually told me that since the county took over the launch this year, that no proper maintenance has been done to the launch or docks. The particular cleat and board that pulled out have been "repaired" several times this season, but the problem is it is all rotted out, screwing a rotted board with a cleat into a rotted dock is asking for problems...there had to be about 6 3" nails and 7 or 8 4" wood screws on each side of the board that came out, we got some great hi res photos of the dock, board and dock frame that shows all the rotted wood...

Well yesterday is behind us and now on to the future, hopefully no significant damage was done to the boat and all will be well to run another day. My buddies leg is fine and will heal, he got a tetnus shot and some vividans for pain, he will heal up fine. It could have been much worse though, if some one had been leaning over or kneeling down when the board came out... we are grateful that injuries were minor and the boat can always be repaired!