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upside down an 6ft deep

plumcrazy

plumcrazy

Well-known member
just came in from a rescue mission young freind of mine decided to give air boat driving lessons to his buddy deep water spin moves rarely work without a lot of stick time glad to say every body is good some brused egos ,i can tell ya big caddy boats are great for sunken airboat recovery raised it an pulled onto dry ground no problem 8)
 
Remember the quote: "There are only two kinds of Airboats: those that have sunk, and those that haven't YET!".
Glad everyones alright....beer and a good laff at the owners expense will fix the ego.
When my Dad sunk his, I dove down and tied a rope to the bow and hooked it to a 40hp tri-hull kicker boatstarted pulling it and the nose came up and we managed to bail it enough to re-float and tow it to James Combees house...week later it was back in the water. Even after being submerged for 12hrs the battery still worked just like it did when it went down. I was suprised by that.
If you get enough speed, water will flow out the back of the drain plug instead of comeing in, doesn't seem to half to go that fast either. YMMV
 
ok I am curious I know your hooking to the sunken boats bow eye but what the heck are you hooking to on the pull boat :?: ..................... I only ask since it is very possible I will need this knowledge in the future :roll: and I can only say I hope I am eh puller instead of the pulley :lol: :lol:
 
goldhunter_2":1ks9fd4v said:
ok I am curious I know your hooking to the sunken boats bow eye but what the heck are you hooking to on the pull boat :?: ..................... I only ask since it is very possible I will need this knowledge in the future :roll: and I can only say I hope I am eh puller instead of the pulley :lol: :lol:
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The pulling boat had two eyes: one on each side of the transom. They were installed to lift the boat out of the water, but we used them for attaching a ski rope.
 
If you are pulling with your boat tie the rope to your bow eye and let rope go under your boat and back.
 
boblee that works great for towing afloating boat but if your pulling one off the bottom i wouldnt try it might end up on the bottom with em i
 
It might want to pull your bow under water. Bow is usually the narrowest part of the boat and has the least floatation

My buddy always says hook to the cage as high as possible to help pull it up, but I have eyes at either side of the transom which I think would probably work ok, and still let you have full use of your steering (rope getting in the rudders)
 
Hooking to the top of the cage sounds real scary to me. Red. It would be a lot of strain on the rigging up there, and if something let loose your prop and probably a lot more stuff would be history in the blink of an eye.

I like the idea of towing from the bow eye.

Here's something I've thought about ...... tell me why it wouldn't work.
Make a rope loop from some very heavy rope. Heavy enough to practically fill the drain holes in your transom.
If you wanted to tow somebody and you knew it was going to be a hard pull, beach your boat, pull your transom plugs, feed this rope loop through it, and go back for them ...... with your bilge pump running of course.

If the rope loop was heavy enough you wouldn't take on water very fast, and there wouldn't be any strain anywhere but down low on your hull.

What am I missing ?
 
Plum always ties to each side of the cage where it bolts to the hull. I left enough gap on my cage where it bolts to the hull for attaching tow lines too. It works very well.
 
Jdot, I understand what you're saying. On my cage, where it bolts to the hull I've only got some 3/8" bolts where it bolts into pretty thin fiberglass on each side.

Down at the drain holes I've got a nice thick transom, and it's tied to the hull stringers. Much stronger. Just a thought.

olf
 
It might want to pull your bow under water. Bow is usually the narrowest part of the boat and has the least floatation
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I forgot you were talking about raising a boat from under the water. I could see how the bow would get pulled under.
 
Well that's a hard number to come up with. I know he's raised sunken airboats about a dozen times and he's pulled my boat back to the ramp a number of times for various reasons. The best one I witnessed was after I busted a starter on BS Hill and he hooked his 15' Airgator to my 15' Alumitech and ran about 75 - 100 yds dry back to the water...dragging my boat behind on the dry too. Once we hit the water it didn't take long to get both boats on plane and we were at Camp Mack in no time. BTW, no one stayed on the boat in the rear due to safety reasons obviously. :shock:
 
Olf Art":2zk63zxt said:
What am I missing ?
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Yeah, I don't like the idea of pulling on the cage that much, but the idea is that you are pulling "up" more on the bow of the sunk boat. If you pulled from the drain plugs, you won't be pulling the bow up out of the water when it reaches the surface

Probably the "safest" method is floating with one or more big inner tubes and then bailing when it gets up to the surface. I have seen bad things happen when pulling all sort of things from stuck trucks to logs. For the overly cautious, pulling is most likely to be avoided as it will always have some inherent risks
 
Olf Art":2cljgmo2 said:
Down at the drain holes I've got a nice thick transom, and it's tied to the hull stringers. Much stronger. Just a thought.

olf
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I like that idea too- definitely seems much safer once you've got the boat up and floating. If you pulled the boat to skinny water or dry ground with the cage and got it drained, it seems like it'd be much easier pulling it back to port running your rope through the transom. as long as your moving 10mph and up, i don't think you'd even need to run your bilge pump.
 
After helping with a couple of sunken airboats and trying to pull a hovercraft with it's skirt in the water I made up a steel cable that hooks to the bow eye then goes under the boat and it has two guide cables that hook to the two eyes on the transom leaving about 6 foot of steel cable out the back to hook the toe strap to --- This keeps everything under the water (or Boat) so if anything brakes it should go down rather than up into the prop. So far I have had good luck with it.
 
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