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Fell victim to my own advice (river debris)


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After cautioning other raiders about the amount of debris in the Hawkesbury that's been lifted by the big high tides lately I hit an unseen, submerged log last Saturday morning and snapped a 32mm stainless prop shaft and lost the prop (17"x17" bronze). Was only doing 10 kts but that was enough.

Lodged a claim with QBE which I believe should be straight forward.

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Guest Aussie007

im always reading about debris in the hawkesbury, this is the first one for a massive tide i read about the rain washing all sorts of crap into the system

many years ago me, my cousin and my cousins mate were heading outside we were running WOT between the bridges when we hit a submerged tree late at night, the engine lifted revving its guts than stalled, later on inspection i trashed the propeller it was so bad we were lucky to make it back

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Many years ago travelling to Port Stevens after very heavy rain driving a 26Ft Savage Game Boat we saw complete trees floating some 2 kms from shore.

Another time we found a container floating with just the top 100mm showing and off the shelf we once found a timber cable drum that was around 1800 dia. We saw that one on a calm day and it had a heap of fish swimming around it.

Hate to think what would have happened had we hit any one of those floating bombs.

We advised the water police and maritime in each instance.

Cheers

Paikea

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Yeah keep us posted how you go.

On a side note if u make a boat claim does that affect any other policies when they ask if u have made a claim in the last x amount of years ?

Edited by GaryO
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When I did the 20 questions thing on the phone I did note they specifically asked about claims against only that policy in the last five years, they didn't ask about other policies. Interesting that there is no claim form, all I have to do is get quotes, email them in and wait for the assessor to call. So far they have been very easy to deal with.

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Good to hear. With QBE do they have a seperate value on outboard and hull ? For instance my insurer has a value on each so if I destroyed the outboard on a log I would only get up to x value even if I could not find a replacement motor for that price. Guess I should over value it incase it did happen.

Edited by GaryO
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The assessor rang today and asked me to send the quote to them. They seem easy to deal with (so far, so good). I am unsure about how they treat value of hull and outboards, my boat has twin 7.4L Mercruiser inboards and I didn't have to value anything separately. The whole vessel is insured for an agreed value.

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The assessor rang today and asked me to send the quote to them. They seem easy to deal with (so far, so good). I am unsure about how they treat value of hull and outboards, my boat has twin 7.4L Mercruiser inboards and I didn't have to value anything separately. The whole vessel is insured for an agreed value.

Seems to be a little different with boats than cars etc.

My trailer boat was originally with GIO who, broke it down to Hull, Trailer and Outboard....after the first year I changed it to CM, where it was just valued as a package....I am presuming that this would just apply on Trailer Boats though.

But I had a similar experience as you last year, I picked up a heavy rope around the outdrives, when I went to go forward both engines stalled. I ended up with a mask, snorkel and knife right on dusk in Botany Bay with less than a metre of vis cutting the rope of the props....and that jaws music going through my head.

Anyway I gently tested everything, and all appeared good, running back to Port Hacking the next day, again I tested everything with a final run up to 32Kn, and no vibration.

So presumed all good.

Over the next month or so, I noted a large difference between fuel use (I run fuel flow meters) between Port and Starboard. Then with around 6-8 people on board I noticed it took a bit longer than norm on the hole shot.

A few weeks later we had it up on the slip, and one of the starboard props had sheered off the rubber dampener/drive....The replacement was around $1200, 3 weeks out of Sweden.

I discussed it with a mate in the marine industry. His first question and continual push, is did you report it to CM..there may be further damage in the leg, tc etc, it could get expensive, any incident you should report to your insurance in case you need to make a claim later.

I phoned CM, and like your experience with QBE it was great everything over the phone. Reminded me my excess was a $1000, but as we discussed I wasn't claiming yet, just reporting in case. Which she logged everything down as an incident, and told me to contact them if the repairs needed to go further.

My point here.......if something happens, if you hit something in the water hard, or with your outboard, snare a rope, fish trap etc etc. And you check it and all appears right, or you do a small repair and think it is right............Ring your insurance claim and lodge and incident ASAP, that way you have something to come back to if there is damage that shows up later, and then you may be arguing a maintainance issue instead of an insurance claim

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

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Ah, the old incident report. I owned a boat many years ago and while up in the Whitsundays, blew a spark plug on the Johnson 50hp clean across Airlie Beach on startup. Had the local boys do a fine repair with an OS plug being the end result. We lodged an incident before we went home (the phone bill should have been claimable back then!). Sure enough, 3 months later the repair failed and we needed a new outboard. That report took a lot of sting out of the replacement as we had under insured the motor. (Typical newbie situation)

I can deal with natural vegetation in our waterways, even though that's easy for me to say, I'm not the guy whose hit a submerged log. But it's the man made rubbish that makes me not proud to be part of "modern" civilisation.

Hope all goes well with the claim.

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I can deal with natural vegetation in our waterways,

But it's the man made rubbish that makes me not proud to be part of "modern" civilisation.

Hope all goes well with the claim.

Thank you. The log was a stumpy root ball that was waterlogged and under the surface in the middle of the river so impossible to see. I'm glad I wasn't going faster. As for man made rubbish floating down the river... How's this for size? Note the treated pine sleeper in the boat too, that was fished out just beside the rail bridge and the old pontoon we found near Dangar Island.

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Dave, that's why there are half a dozen wine and champaign corks hanging from a tie in the engine room. I am however missing a spider monkey to crawl in there to jam one in. :)

There's a young guy in Victoria who is pretty adept.....only trouble is he does it naked and you will need to get the fire dept in to get him out

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cool can you get me one of thoes spider monkeys too getting old stinks :ranting2:

BTW hope your back out on the water soon. the water is great at moment. I'm trying to get out each sunday :banana:

Depends on your interpretation of old! All I know is that with a couple of disc operations, servicing twin 454's and a Kohler is a major days job and a massage!

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Depends on your interpretation of old! All I know is that with a couple of disc operations, servicing twin 454's and a Kohler is a major days job and a massage!

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Gees Ian, doing an impeller change on the Kohler requires a three day fast and a slow exhale on the way in :) if only my arms were an extra metre longer.

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