In Episode 15 we head out off Noosa and only one of the Fish Finders working. Not long after the second Fish Finder / Sounder also stops. The Mac Tuna are around and we end up catching plenty of them - however it's not our target species so we start bottom fishing.
We find new grounds as we can't use our usual marks on the sounder - with plenty of juvenile Red Emperor and a mix of Grassy's and Snapper. The Jetski becomes hard to start and on a few drifts we only just get it started.
The reef sharks are out in numbers and we catch quite a few of those as well. Suddenly the blatantly obvious becomes obvious and it's suddenly apparent the Jetski is sitting much lower in the water. The yellow cannister on the back RHS is bobbing up and down and we realise we are sinking.
After several minutes of attempting to start the Ski, it magically kicks into gear - however the back of the ski is so heavy that both Jojo and myself need to stand at the front of the ski and still it is pointing up much higher than on full trim.
The clever Seadoo engine puts us into LIMP mode and for the next 40 minutes we ride at 6knotts (maximum when in LIMP mode) - and even cross the Bar and up the Noosa River to the Boat Ramp.
Pulling the Jetski on the trailer you can feel how heavy it is. Once we pull out the bung plugs the water flows and flows and flows - somewhere between 100L to 200L in total. Because the engine has been full of water and running at 8,000RPM for 40 minutes, the water is that hot you cannot touch it.
DIAGNOSIS:
Two things happened -
1. The bilge pump has died and was not pumping out any water in the hull. We had actually been sinking for about 4 trips but the bilge pump had disguised the problem as it pumped out all of the water before we would return home to the ramp each trip.
2. Jordi from Shoreline Seadoo found a leak where the external transduce cable goes into the hull and over a period of about 8 hours on the water (without a working bilge pump) - we took on all of the water you can see in the episode. Well actually the GoPro battery ran out and the amount caught on camera was one third of the actual amount of water that came out.
In Bell's Kitchen we have Master Chef Alegge and Sous Chef Bodie cooking CRISPY CORAL TROUT SKINS - in a simple but tasty reciepe where you don't even remove the scales.
So enjoy Episode 15 and apologies for a bit of water on the camera in some of the scenes.
VHJA
