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Runnin' the Tall Grass

Southern Airboat Gallery Archives

wading in the rain
THEY CALL ME
poker run for rick gordon
Taking a break after a long dry run with the AC guys!!
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100_03802
Doc Holliday

Doc Holliday

Well-known member
Time for a lighter subject.......

Is it just me, or is running the tall grass at night just about the scariest thing you can do in an airboat!!!

We airboat in WCA-2A (South Florida), which is primarily sawgrass prairie. In most of the area, there are no hardwood trees (cypress, pine, etc.), only the softer trees (don't know the type, they bend, they break, they give). There's very little palmetto scrub. There are dozens of trails, which we know pretty well.

Now the issue. My buddy and I basically have a joint venture in the airboat. So when we go out together, we share drive time. When he drives, he would much rather "make" trails than follow them. As a front passenger, cruising through 14 foot sawgrass in the middle of the night scares the bejeesus out of me. I don't know if it's a fear of hitting something (even though I know the chances of that are remote), running into a head of trees (though my bud swears he can see, and we haven't done it yet), or of engine failure in the middle of the tall grass, or a combo of all three. It just seems to freak me out.

Now understand....I'm not talking a hundred yards or so of tall grass.....I'm talking miles of tall grass, literally 10 minutes plus where passenger visibility is limited to the 14 foot stalks directly ahead.

Am I a wuss? Or is this something I'll get over with more experience? Or maybe it's good to be scared?

Doc
 
No problem at all. Just go aout and buy a Satalight phone,GPS, Large whip with an orange flag, lots of bug spray, water, an of course beer. Nothing will happen then. :D
 
Well I don't think it makes you a wuss LOL. The driver always feels a little better than the passenger about stuff like that. I have run for miles in the dead of night with no moon in 12' tall cattails only driving by a gps screen I can't say it was the most fun I ever had with my clothes on. I don't drink anymore but sure was considering one that night. We were low on gas and decided to take a direct route back to the ramp it looked good at first then they got taller and taller and thicker and thicker and then it was too late to turn around. It did no good to look ahead cause all there was to look at was grass, no need to look up clouds blocked the stars, I couldn't just go slow because had to have power and speed to knockem down. The catepillars were 6" deep in the boat and all over us. I darn near lost a girlfreind over that trip. LOL She left later anyways when it came down to choosing over fixing the a/c in the truck or a new carb for the boat the carb won and I guess so did I LOL. later Ya'll
 
Nope, being concerned about running sawgrass seems half sane. Walking out through that stuff would be bad, like walking through razors.

There is a big stand in SW Louisiana that I rode through. That boat was turning every RPM it could to keep movin and we were looking for open spots to get up some speed. It was my friend's wife first airboat ride out of the water and both of us were in the back seat with death grips on the O'shit handles.

Not much sawgrass left in Louisiana, salt water intrusion killed most of it. But we have some tall stands of bulrush and cane (Cajuns call it Roseau). The bulrush will be 6 to 9 feet and the cane gets as tall as 12 to 14 feet. Running that stuff can make your blood pressure increase a little.

Knew one boy that hit an abandoned oil field valve stem (Christmas tree) down on the Mississippi River Delta. He was lucky it was a glancing blow and just tossed the boat to the side. If he could have gotten his hands on the oilfield company there wouldn't have been the need for a lawsuit. There wouldn't have been anyone alive to sue.

I was driven a friend's 0-540 one night and we were out playing. He had to be back early so I took a short cut. There was a patch of the Roseau about 1/4 mile wide in a marsh we could just cut through to save about 7 miles of water running. The boat would cruise at 1800 and he hadn't turned it up above 2300 in a long time. He didn't realize the rings were shot and as I goosed it to get through the cane I noted it didn't have lots of power. We got about 200 yards and forward motion stopped. Here it is, the middle of a humid August night and we had to stomp a running lane through that stuff. Stomp 50 to 100 feet, drink water, gasp for air, and hit the throttle. We would take turns sitting with a foot on the throttle and the other pulling. It would start moving and when the pulling man jumped in, it would stop. He finally got it moving with me pulling, and I just fell aside and waved him by. He got the boat out and I walked through the rest of the stuff. Needless to say when we got in his lady was sitting with the car packed. He was planning to hit the road at about 4:00 AM and we were late just rollin in at about 5:00 AM. Nowdays we just drink beer and laugh about it now, she doesn't like us to go out unless we are in separate boats. Said we develop bad charma. No humor in that gal.
 
Doc,
Sounds like a great example of Darwin's theory of natural selection to me.
It is adventures like you describe that make for good newspaper articles that can be posted on this message board for others to learn from.

Let's consider some of the possible headlines:

"Airboaters Spend 4 Days and 3 Nights In Everglades"
"Missing Airboaters Thankful To Be Back Home and Alive"
"Helicopter Spots Abandoned Airboat In Everglades"
"Authorities Locate Airboat - No Sign of Occupants"
"Families Search for Missing Airboaters"
"Loved Ones Plea for Help in Finding Missing Airboaters"
"Bodies of Airboaters Located Following Intense Search"

If it looks like a duck, sounds like a duck and walks like a duck . . . It is probably not a good idea.

I recently read a comment somewhere that stated airboats should be operated in a safe and responsible manner. Hmmmmmm, I wonder if that applies here.

WaterLizard 8)
 
This is about as much grass as I've run. Not quite what you would expect from the middle of Alaska. There is no walking out of here. This is about 30 miles from the nearest road and it's on the other side of a major river.
twoboatswamp02-800.jpg
 
mkweaver - looks beautiful and thirty miles from the nearest road. The last fronter, just gets to darn cold. Hope you are enjoying it.

Doc - yea there is lots that can be hidden in grass that is 3 feet tall, so it doesn't have to be 6 feet plus to hide stuff that is dangerous. Being worried about it or cautious makes you think about safety and being more likely to come home with you, your passengers, and your airboat in one piece. And that is what it is all about.

I typically stay out of areas of tall vegetation unless I have ran the area really well following a burn so dangerous stuff can be spotted.

Heck, with the hurricanes that wash in logs, hitting one of those in the marsh that is 2 feet in diameter can mess up a day. Waist high grass hides them fairly well.

I know of an old Ford tractor hiding in 4 to 5 foot cattail. Some duck hunter was disking this pond in a drought and it got stuff. They never got it out. The old timers called the pond the tractor pond and i never knew why until the marsh got burned off. It still is sitting there for the early 1970s. I figured I ran by it at least a dozen times.

We have lots of old steel frame duck blinds as well on one chunk of land. They were made with heavy duty 1.5 to 2 inch galvinized angle iron for corners. The duck hunters sunk all but about 1 foot into the marsh. Now the angle iron sticks out like bayonets. We mark them well with 3 inch schedule 80 PVC pipe. Everyone running on that land knows that don't drive over to PVC to check it out as it is a danger marker.

On the north end of Trinity Bay, there are lots of submerged oilfield junk in one place that is like a mine field. Running at night with too much speed is very dangerous. Cannot see the stuff and it can send you airborne.

Then just the critters you can run into in the tall vegetation can cause some problems. Had an American Bittern (we call them Sun Grazers) land at my feet one day, trust me if you get close to them they stab at your eyes with the beak. Herons had come close to landing in the boat and a wildlife rehaber said they do the same, straight for your eyes. Had a cormorant hit me in the head after we flushed a bunch from where they were roosting. Each time we had alittle to much forward motion to allow them to escape in time.

Waterlizard is right. Lots of us had done things the wrong way and gotten away lucky. That is why I share some of the stupid things I have done :oops: , so maybe someone else will not have the same thing happen with much worst results.
 
mkweaver,
That engine was spinning a lot of wood!
I would be interested in knowing what went through the prop(s).
I am willing to bet that that incident got everyone's attention.
Has the boat been repaired and if so at what cost?
I am wondering if the owner went back to the wood prop(s) or replaced them with a single multi-blade composite.
Inquiring minds want to know.

WaterLizard 8)
 
That is my brother's boat - essentially a twin to mine. I was in the right passenger seat, my brother's daughter was in the left passenger seat and my brother was driving. Here's a small movie of another stretch of the same stream:http://alascad.crackmonkey.us/010715GeorgeCreek.mov.

The front prop was an 84x54 and the rear was 84x50. They were turning at about 2500 rpms.

We came around a shallow corner (3 or 4 inches of water over a sandy gravel bottom) with a bit too much speed. Bob, the pilot, had his foot in the carburator trying to hold it in the corner. The prop guard hit an angled 6" spruce tree right at the level of the crankshaft.

The repairs where made in the field. We made a trip to town for replacement props, acetylene welder, and some prop guard tubing. We ran the boat for about 5 more years on those field repairs.

We replaced the wood props with nearly identical wood props again. We haven't found composite props to be as efficient as these long wooden props. That may be different if we could get composite to match the length, but haven't found those yet.
 
Thanks for all the replies on this. cntry141iq and marshmaster, your stories sound exactly like some of the trips I've taken on our boat. Waterlizard, I agree that it's probably not the safest/smartest thing to do. And mkweaver, who needs the tall grass to be spooked when you're cruising down the creek as your video shows, what with all the branches hanging down....hmmmm.

I'll never forget my first two airboat rides. The first one was with my cousin and his friends in Brevard county. Middle of the night in a small lake which had sawgrass in the middle. They sat me on the front of the boat, and the driver proceeded to cut right through the middle of the tall grass, which slapped me in the face more than once. They called it an "initiation" ride. I really didn't enjoy that one (it was a small lake, and a short ride with three other people on the boat).

The second airboat ride of my life was shortly after my buddy bought "our" airboat. We were out in WCA-2A in July '01. The water was high, and so was the grass. We made it out to "Voodoo" camp (otherwise known as the Ramblin' Rose), and took off on the west trail from there. After about three miles, my buddy lost the trail. At that point, he just drove line of sight to the radio tower, which was six or seven miles away, near the boat ramp. The grass was tall, and he didn't know any speed but full out at that time. We ran tall grass (and I'm talkin' 10-14 feet tall) for 15-20 minutes at what had to have been 20 mph+ before we hit a trail. I was cut up, scared sh*&less, and gettin' holy when we finally came up on a trail. Took me three days to wipe the smile off my face. From that point, I was hooked on airboats.

Will I run tall grass again? Of course, especially if I ride with my friend. Will I make the headlines? I sure hope not (I really liked the one "airboat found...no sign of passengers"). But I will continue to try and instill a sense of caution into my friend, to try and keep him out of the tall grass when there's a known trail that will work just as well.
 
mkweaver,

I am curious to know more about you engine, reduction ratio, and props. A long slow turning prop should have good static thrust.

Jim
 
We are running stock Buick 455s with 2:1 cogged belt reduction units (Airboat Drive Units CH3). We are swinging 84" long Sensenich props with 54" to 60" pitch on the rear prop and 50" to 54" pitch on the front. Running regular gasoline the props hold the engine down to about 4200 rpms and produce about 1200 lbs of thrust. We've tried aftermarket cams and all that did was make the boat harder to push away from the riverbank - without getting more rpms on the high end. At one point we ran some high octane av-gas that let us turn up to 4500 rpms which made quite a difference, but we decided it was too expensive and we seldom need the extra power.

These boats will run dry ground without a problem and have been used for transporting 1500# moose across tundra. We built a cabin and routinely transported 1000# loads into here:http://alascad.crackmonkey.us/pics/alaskabuilding/GeorgeLake01/04March/PICT1566-800.JPG - during the summer:)

Running the hill:
http://alascad.crackmonkey.us/Black Lake Crossing-small.jpg
 
Mike,

That is a cool boat, I love to see inovation. Car engines never interested me much, but turning a big prop at a really low rpm is only possible with a some sort of reduction drive. This is interesting.

What is the compression ratio of the 455 that ran better on the 100LL. Did you have to retard the ignition to run on regular (from the setting used for the avgas)?

Usually if an engine will run on a lower octane fuel without detonation, it will lose power with higher octane fuel because the higher octane actually burns slower, unless the spark is advanced or the compression is raised. At least that has been my experience. I get real interested when I see something different, there are always exceptions.

I would like to see some static thrust numbers from some people running shorter props. Anyone have any?

Jim
 
Mine had higher compression at about 10:1, so I would guess the other was running about 9:1 or maybe 9.5:1. I don't think anything was done to change the timing. It was on a search and rescue and the fuel was provided.

Here is the info we produced:
84x50 single prop: http://alascad.crackmonkey.us/PropChart_001.gif
84x54 single prop: http://alascad.crackmonkey.us/PropChart_002.gif
84x60 single prop: http://alascad.crackmonkey.us/PropChart_003.gif
72x60 single prop: http://alascad.crackmonkey.us/PropChart_004.gif
78x80 paddle prop: http://alascad.crackmonkey.us/PropChart_005.gif
78x50 paddle prop: http://alascad.crackmonkey.us/PropChart_006.gif
71x50 3-blade prop: http://alascad.crackmonkey.us/PropChart_007.gif
84x50 + 84x60 prop: http://alascad.crackmonkey.us/PropChart_008.gif
84x50 + 84x54 prop: http://alascad.crackmonkey.us/PropChart_009.gif
 
Mike,

Thanks for sharing the information. Did you do all of that research? Are there other engine combinations running these dual props?

Jim
 
We, my brother, my dad, and I, have been messing with airboats since the early 80s. We generated these charts with one of the first boats we built.

We have run a couple of different reduction ratios but always with the same powerplant. We have varied the compression ratio slightly, and tried one non-stock cam.

Actually, as I think about it, we did run a double prop with a Ford 3.8L V6 that worked fairly well. The boat was a bit underpowered, but the powerplant seemed to work fairly well. I would have to look around to see if I have any charts on that one.

We started with the double props because, at the time, there were no single props available that would soak up the power we were producing. I would love to play around with a long, adjustable pitch composite prop. I am convinced that the longer the prop is the more efficient it will be. At one point we even considered going to 92" props, but never got beyond the consideration stage.
 
Mike,

I think if you talk to an aircraft prop designer, he would agree with you. The seaplane props were usually longer than the landplane version of the same plane for more thrust. The long props would not work on the landplane due to ground clearance problems.

It makes me wonder why some of the airboat prop builders don't try the longer blades, since there are so many reduction drive installations out there. I like the prop cutout in your hull too. Thanks again for the info.

Jim
 
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