Going Jetskiing, what could possibly go wrong?

[tnj4life]

I know alot of us have stories of what could go wrong on a day of jetskiing. Seemed like last season something went wrong every trip to the lake. My wife sunk our x2 due to it not sealing well around the hood, battery crapping on me in the middle of the lake, flats on the trailer, gas can flipping over and saturating my wifes life jacket (guess who had to wear it, I broke out in rashes), locked my cousins keys in his running truck while trying to jump my father in laws kawi 900 sts, carb almost falls off 440 conversion ski, and misc other breakdowns with the 440 conversion ski (crank seals, starter drive, broken couplers, flywheel key). Im sure im forgetting something else but it seems if somethings gonna go wrong it does when im going to the lake or on the lake. That was just season 2 for me so I know alot of you seniors have had your share of junk. Anyone ever fling a ski off a trailer??

 

[stanton]

2 dead batteries in surf with help 2 miles away.

 

[Borderguy]

Most issues i have seen involve dead batteries/ exploding batteries, and of course skis running out of fuel. LOL

 

[SuperJETT]

I forgot to pin my ski and it slid off while pulling the trailer out of the water, TWICE. No damage either time, but man does that make you feel like a rookie. You'd think after 17-18 years of riding I'd be able to remember that, or I'm just getting old and forgetful.

 

[Mark44]

Sounds like you guys need to focus.

Mark44

 

[ger87410]

Sounds like you guys need to focus.

Mark44

Or put down the pipe.:jester:

 

[Wave Chaser]

I hate to admit it but once I had modified a single ski trailer to haul 2 standups and then before I finished it decided to go ski 10 min from the house. made it to the turn to go to the ramp and while i had the rear strapped the front swung out and tilted towards the ground. gave the bottom a bad rash but did not go all the way thru. I used it for another month before patching it.

 

[S*G]

Haha me and my uncle were Riding one time and a blown exaust gasket On his 440 caused a stall I'm the middle of the lake. Gues who toed him back in withoutht a rope

 

[vjhardcore]

Northern Canadian Lake - Cold Halloween weekend in October. Was out for a run on my old 650sx in my 8mm wet suit - lake was quiet / calm / all the boats in the area were put away for the year. Stator ended up jamming on a re start -:1zhelp:I had to swim/push my ski for almost 2 hours.:17:

I got back to shore and went inside the cottage, my mother's like would you like some lunch? My dad's like would you like a drink? I was like did you not notice I was gone for almost 3 hours? I was F'ing swimming for two hour trying to get back to shore! :261:

 

[ger87410]

Northern Canadian Lake - Cold Halloween weekend in October. Was out for a run on my SJ in my 5mm wet suit - lake was quiet / calm / all the boats in the area were put away for the year. Stator ended up jamming on a re start -:1zhelp:I had to swim/push my ski for almost 2 hours.:17:

I got back to shore and went inside the cottage, my mother's like would you like some lunch? My dad's like would you like a drink? I was like did you not notice I was gone for almost 3 hours? I was F'ing swimming for two hour trying to get back to shore! :261:

I've had that scenario happen twice so far on our XP.

PITA. Then you get back to shore and complain that nobody missed you. :wink:

 

[oxnard111]

on my uncles 750sx with a coffman wet pipe, one of the small couplers gave out and was filling engine compartment up with ex. fumes... He had to ride back like 5 miles with one hand lifting the hood so it could still breathe. that was funny... I've had many many other bad stories also, but don't even get me started.

 

[vitalikol]

I was riding with my buddy standups and I run out of fuel 2 miles from drop point without tow rope. I was grabing his leg with one hand and nose of my SXR (without gas)with other and was towing each other this way for 2 long miles.When we get back I had biggest cramp in my wrist in my life

 

[SuperFun]

10PM Christmas day, I was driving over highway 17 in Cali, a site of many bad wrecks due to it being a twisty mountain road that everybody drives fast on. All of a sudden the nose of my trailer was dragging on the ground. Good thing I had fixed my safety chains that morning! There was no shoulder so I had to drag it for about 100 yards with sparks flying to get to a place with a grass shoulder so I could get off the road. I had been using a stupid ball that has threads inside and a bolt goes up through the receiver thing into the ball. Dumb design. Once it got loose it dropped out. One of the safety chains had been ground all the way through, if I hadn't fixed the other one that morning I would've lost the trailer. Of course being Christmas nothing was open that had trailer ball, and i didn't want to leave it all night on the side of a busy highway. I ended up taking a trailer ball of a random truck on the side of a road in the cover of darkness with adrenaline pumping. I went back got the trailer towed it to my sister in law's house. Then returned the trailer ball to the truck I took it off after midnight, with the adrenaline coming again since even though I was returning it, it looked like I was stealing it. Took about 3 hours altogether so not so bad.

I saw two boats get dropped and a truck roll into the water at the launch ramps this year.

 

[oxnard111]

We watched a guy with a huge sail boat backing down the launch ramp, he slammed on his breaks for some reason, front wench broke free, and the boat slide halfway off the trailer... His whole family was on the boat... That was freakin stupid. We got like 15 guys to pick up the back end and push it as far on the trailer as possible. Then like 8 guys hung on the front to get the back off the ground (like a titer-totter), and the guy backed the boat into the water so he could get it back on the trailer properly.

 

[Lammy]

Only think I had go wrong was running out of gas 2 times. Both times someone stopped to help tow me in, so no big deal.
worst was when I had put my ski in the water and had my uncle go pull out my jeep and when he was shifting out of 4wd he went too fast and the linkage fell apart underneath the Jeep, got stuck in neutral...on the boat ramp....
I tried to fix it there, but it was too hot and my sxr was floating away, so I just said screw it and went out to play while it cooled down.
Thank god for emergency brakes

 

[wydopen]

i had a bad battery and it wouldnt hold a charge for more than a day or so...i forgot to charge it and it was dead when we got to the harbor..i jumped it at the ramp and headed out..up to that point it had recharged fine while i was riding..got down to the spot we ride which was about 3miles from the ramp..third or forth wave i fell and the ski died..guess what? it wouldnt start...no towrope or anything..we scavenged the beach for over an hour and found some drip line that we used to tow me back..not fun

a few weekends ago i took my neighbor out on my spare rn...we were riding a few miles away from the launch spot..he fell right on the sand and the turnplate snapped in two when the ski hit the beach..i rode it back for him without any steering at all...i just set the steering strait and leaned to steer..it actually worked pretty well..

one time at pismo it was super foggy (like 10ft visibility) and the waves were pretty big...fist wave i got sucked over the falls and just slammed against the sand in like 10ft of water..when i was pinned on the sand i reached out and could feel my ski pressed against the bottom as well..when i came up my hood was long gone and i was sitting in the impact zone trying to drag my ski back in...the only thing sticking up was about 1inch of the back of the tray...it took along time to get it in..it wasnt fun

a few months ago we went riding..i had removed my head to change the orings and didnt have a torque wrench..i thought i had it tight enough but must not have..the head came loose a few miles from the launch...no tow rope again..the waves were good so i told my buddy to go ahead and ride...i ended up swimming my ski all the way back..it took me almost two hrs..not fun

ive also had the trailer pop off the ball before..it was with my huge waverunner on a tiny single trailer..we were going tow surfing and it was like 5am..it was still dark and we were going down the freeway at like 85mph..i looked back and there were sparks flying up from the trailer..i couldnt slam on the brakes so i had to let it drag for a mile or so until we slowed down..the saftey chains were hanging on by a thread..that could have been bad..we ended up scoring good waves but we got rolled by the coast guard for being too close to shore on a navy base..on the way back the boards fell off the towsled and we didnt notice for a few miles..we drove around in the middle of the ocean looking for them for about 45min and finally found them


hey oxnard111..dont forget when both your skis broke 5miles from the launch and when brett was helping you with yours the one he was borrowing from you rolled over on the sand and had the hole punched in the side from the 4x4 sticking up from the sand

 

[227]

One time Tomski and I went to Mexico to ride Cantamar (The Mex Rager spot). Right when we arrived we noticed that we had blown out one of the wheel bearings in the ski trailer. The surf was pretty big 6-8’ faces and we were eager to ride so we figured we deal with that later, after all we were in Mexico and “stuff” like that just seems to happen. So we were riding 2 miles South of the sandy beach against the cliffs when Tom stuffs his ski and sank it completely with only the back 1” above the water. We were in the surf line (Rocks and cliffs on the beach) and couldn’t get to shore to dump the water out of Tom’s ski. Tom didn’t have a bilge, only a scupper. We had to tow Tom’s ski backwards through the Big surf the 2 miles to get to the sandy beach were we could work on it. We ended up getting Tom’s ski going and rode great waves all day. We had such a good time we had forgotten about the trailer. At the end of the day we went into town looking for some trailer bearings. We ended up finding some cheesy auto parts store which had a limited selection of wheel bearings. The best we could do was a bearing whose OD matched the hub but the ID was too big for the axle spindle. We ran it anyway. We ended up driving from Cantamar Mexico all the way back to Oceanside at 30mph with a wobblely wheel full of tacos and stoked!

 

[oxnard111]

i had a bad battery and it wouldnt hold a charge for more than a day or so...i forgot to charge it and it was dead when we got to the harbor..i jumped it at the ramp and headed out..up to that point it had recharged fine while i was riding..got down to the spot we ride which was about 3miles from the ramp..third or forth wave i fell and the ski died..guess what? it wouldnt start...no towrope or anything..we scavenged the beach for over an hour and found some drip line that we used to tow me back..not fun

a few weekends ago i took my neighbor out on my spare rn...we were riding a few miles away from the launch spot..he fell right on the sand and the turnplate snapped in two when the ski hit the beach..i rode it back for him without any steering at all...i just set the steering strait and leaned to steer..it actually worked pretty well..

one time at pismo it was super foggy (like 10ft visibility) and the waves were pretty big...fist wave i got sucked over the falls and just slammed against the sand in like 10ft of water..when i was pinned on the sand i reached out and could feel my ski pressed against the bottom as well..when i came up my hood was long gone and i was sitting in the impact zone trying to drag my ski back in...the only thing sticking up was about 1inch of the back of the tray...it took along time to get it in..it wasnt fun

a few months ago we went riding..i had removed my head to change the orings and didnt have a torque wrench..i thought i had it tight enough but must not have..the head came loose a few miles from the launch...no tow rope again..the waves were good so i told my buddy to go ahead and ride...i ended up swimming my ski all the way back..it took me almost two hrs..not fun

ive also had the trailer pop off the ball before..it was with my huge waverunner on a tiny single trailer..we were going tow surfing and it was like 5am..it was still dark and we were going down the freeway at like 85mph..i looked back and there were sparks flying up from the trailer..i couldnt slam on the brakes so i had to let it drag for a mile or so until we slowed down..the saftey chains were hanging on by a thread..that could have been bad..we ended up scoring good waves but we got rolled by the coast guard for being too close to shore on a navy base..on the way back the boards fell off the towsled and we didnt notice for a few miles..we drove around in the middle of the ocean looking for them for about 45min and finally found them


hey oxnard111..dont forget when both your skis broke 5miles from the launch and when brett was helping you with yours the one he was borrowing from you rolled over on the sand and had the hole punched in the side from the 4x4 sticking up from the sand

ya, that happened... freakin sucked. dead battery in one ski and bad s/s switch in the other... traded batteries on shore, and a wave came up and turned the square on its side onto a 4x4 sticking up at an angle out of the sand.

details here...

http://www.x-h2o.com/threads/26897

but like I said earlier, don't even get me started... too many stories to list.

 

[brett]

:friday:good times

 

[nofear195]

broke down on the AWA/AJC freeride got towed back in

towed my buddies RN in with my blaster, best of all was towing so fast that he could stand up. he ended but blowing out a reed.

lost a cooling line inside the hull on my blaster, emptied the water on a rocky shore line, started to ride it back to the ramp and the overheat sensor kicked in. got it towed back, quick fix on the ramp and was back in action

same ski that died on the freeride died again on the river needed a tow. but only after i flowed down some.

then the best time was when i dislocated my shoulder running buoys. riding backwards on a couch was no fun trying to hold on and hold my arm from moving. also didnt have a vest on took it off to make some of the pain go away