u/Boner4Stoners

TL;DR: Failure to properly tighten the fuel cap caused it to back out and fly off without me realizing it until I was 15 miles away from my launch at a Lake Michigan beach. I’m certain a fair amount of water got in before I noticed, but I was able to make it back by using my internal oil tank cap to seal the exposed fuel tank. Water removal plan at the bottom if anyone can give some feedback.

So I recently acquired a ‘97 Kawa STX 1100. It’s in excellent condition (both external and internal), and has been running great.

Anyway, I wanted to take it out yesterday as the afternoon weather was perfect on Lake Michigan. It’s about a 50 minute ride from my local boat launch to my favorite state park beach on the big lake (most of that time is spent in a no-wake zone through Grand Haven). So I finally get out onto the big lake and rip it down the coast, once I got to the beach I went to beach it… when — horrified— I noticed the fuel cap was missing, and the fuel inlet (on the bow) was completely open to taking in water. I couldn’t tell previously because the left mirror perfectly blocks the fuel cap from the riding position.

I was getting splashed by surf so I immediately pulled it back behind the break zone, fired it up and found a calmer section of beach & power beached it. In the process I witnessed some water pass over the fuel port, not sure how much got in but given that most of my ride was spent plowing in no-wake, I’m certain that a fair amount of water entered the tank (maybe 1/2-1 gallon max in a 15 gal tank that I had topped off prior to launching).

Once it was safely beached away from surf/spray, I removed the (internal) oil cap and put that on the fuel cap, took a moment to mourn my evening (the weather was absolutely gorgeous) & called a mechanic friend to verify that the oil pump did not need a sealed/pressurized tank to operate. I figured that since the fuel tank was (mostly) full, the water would settle at the bottom & since the primary fuel system pulls from the middle of the tank, I’d be able to get home without sputtering out — worst case I had a marine radio w/ DCS+GPS if I got stranded on the big lake.

Thankfully I was right, and made it back without issue. The root cause was user error — upon arriving to the boat launch, I pulled aside to do my pre-launch checklist: ventilate engine compartment, open fuel cap to release any pressure, get it running prior to launching etc. When I opened the fuel cap, I put it back on but got distracted before fully tightening & forgot to go back and tighten. So the engine vibration worked the threads loose & it probably flew off during my initial rip from the boat launch to the GH no-wake area, and I just didn’t notice.

Anyway, once it was back in my garage I put the oil cap back on the oil tank to prevent moisture from getting in (as that would be a much bigger problem than water in the fuel) and covered the fuel inlet with some plastic wrap.

Water removal plan: I have a siphon (and awaiting a replacement fuel cap), my plan is to put the ski on the slope of my driveway, let it settle, remove the refueling hose to give me more direct access to the tank. Then feed the siphon to the lowest area of the tank and start siphoning until I see the fuel/water boundary in the siphon tube (and siphon a bit more past that point). Then add some HEET (isoproyl version), top off the tank with 93 octane to account for the ethanol being removed alongside the water, and then take it out and burn through the main tank. Take it home and siphon off the remaining 1.8gal and dispose of that, before running through another full tank.

I would just siphon everything out but there’s likely 8-10 gal in the tank and I don’t have a gas can big enough to store that (only a 5 gal). My understanding is that a small amount of water in the fuel tank shouldn’t harm the engine as long as it doesn’t sit like that for long enough to rust the cylinders, degrade fuel lines/carb diaphragms etc. And the HEET should emulsify remaining water so that it just gets burnt off alongside the fuel/oil as it’s running. Seems like the main risk is that the engine sputters out on my initial run, but I have friends with boats/skis to rescue me and worst case can call for help over channel 16.

Definitely learned my lesson about complacency, I was feeling rushed due to a busy boat launch and ultimately that’s what lead to this headache. Could have been a lot worse though, as it stands I got off lightly with only a ruined evening. I think my water removal plan is solid but if anybody wants to chime in with feedback or critiques I’m happy to hear them.

New (older 2-stroke Kawa) PWC owner here. I've rode friend's 2-stroke dozens of times, and have never seen anybody remove the seat cover to ventilate before starting once the craft is already in deep water and has been sitting for a while with the engine killed.

It's easy enough to ventilate in the boat launch parking lot before pulling into the launch, but in doing research I've come across many instances of PWC's exploding when being re-started in deep water. And my owner's manual specifies to remove the seat every time the engine is started, but doesn't elaborate on how to do so if in deep water which is annoying...

Sure, you can inspect the fuel lines but honestly for older 2-strokes, you can never be 100% something didn't come loose during the initial ride. Pulling the seat off in deep water is awkward (there's nowhere to put the seat), and if it were to capsize with the bay open your day is ruined (and potentially so is the engine). Since we often bring jetskis out on boating days, it's common for the jetskis to sit there tied up to the boat for long periods before someone hops on and rips it, so I'm trying to plan ahead for peace of mind.

The workaround I've thought out is to instead just open the front hatch, remove the safety gear container and then use a small handheld blower to circulate air through the engine bay for a minute or so, and then starting with the compartment open (so if it does combust, there's no pressure buildup). I have one of these newer blowers, it's a brushless motor that spins 100k+ RPM and is insanely powerful so I think it would probably be sufficient to ventilate out fumes without having to remove the seat. I'd just bring it out in a watertight bag to keep it dry.

I haven't been able to find much discussion on this so I'm wondering what y'all do. I know the odds of an explosion are relatively small on a well-maintained craft, but I don't really want this concern gnawing at me when I'm out having fun.

Greazy Wil was the guest on the Phil Specter episode, but it seems like he and Robert and very close friends.

Anyone else know what other episodes Wil was on? Feel like he’s been on many but I can only remember the most recent appearance.

I’m loving it so far. The whole “Alex Jones is dead and has been replaced by a clone” bit is the perfect rhetorical start, literally just throwing all his noxious conspiracy theories straight at his face. And the groyper base on Twitter is trolling the fuck out of him by going along with the bit. He’s become a punching bag for both the left and the right which is the most poetic ending imaginable for Mr. “Above the left-right paradigm”

Story time (bit of a long one):

Last weekend, my friends and I rented out a lakehouse to celebrate my fiancé’s birthday. We arrived Friday, along with about half of the total group for the weekend and had a relatively chill night. My fiancé and I are night owls, so after the rest of the group retired for the night around 1AM, we stayed up watching a few episodes of a show.

So when we awoke in the morning around 10AM, everybody else had already been up for a while. I walked down to the shore and saw that my friend’s boat was missing, and knew that he would be out spending the morning fishing. We’ll call this friend John — he’s a fellow drone pilot as well as an actual airplane pilot, instructor & mechanic.

I thought it would be funny to put my drone in the air, locate him and buzz by to fuck with him. I walk over to another friend (who we’ll call Eric & who happens to have the same exact drone as I do) who was outside charging the trolling batteries on his boat (which he had not yet put in the water) and told him my plan, of which he was on board. He had also brought an RC plane and decided he’d fly that around too while I was looking for John.

So I pull the drone out of the case, throw in a battery, extend the arms and boot it up. Once it had acquired enough satellites, I attempt a handlaunch…. 3 sets of props spin up normally, but the rear right set failed to spin up & the drone aborted the launch.

“That’s not good,” Eric said while I looked at the drone & controller, puzzled. Without responding I immediately attempt another launch; this time all 4 sets spin up & the drone takes off normally.

“That was weird,” I say, laughing it off.

I should note that all the props on my drone were aftermarket, and not particularly high-quality — the plastic was much more firm and lacked the flexibility of OEM props, but I had dozens of hours of issue-free flying on props from this supplier so I generally trusted them.

If you’re like me & love watching those NTSB aviation safety videos, this is the classic “red flag” moment where the narrator chastises my carelessness in launching the drone without trying to troubleshoot the earlier aborted launch. Anyway…

I fly around the (relatively small, inland) lake looking for John, but there are several small fishing boats that could have been his & I would have had to have gotten too close to a potentially random boat/person in order to make a positive ID, so I give up on the mission and park the drone above a bed of reedy marsh that bordered the NW corner of the lake.

Another friend had walked over to spectate, so my attention is split between talking to her & watching the idling drone. Suddenly, the drone seems to drop out of the sky. I watch in horror as the drone spirals towards the lake, hoping in vain that it would somehow recover and regain stable flight.

But that doesn’t happen. Right as it’s about to make impact with the lake/reeds, I lose connection & the video cuts off. I should also mention that my DJI Insurance plan had long since lapsed, I never renewed it after the first year…

THE RESCUE MISSION:

Ironically, John had returned to shore right after the crash — I see him disembarking from his boat and alert him of the situation. Me, him and Eric jump on his boat and make a beeline to the crash site. We have the last known location of the drone pulled up on the controller, although we didn’t have a sattelite map downloaded so it was just an effectively blank screen with two dots: one showing my current location, the other showing the drone’s.

As we draw near, it becomes clear that the drone is somewhere in the middle of the massive reed marsh. I have mixed feelings about this — the reeds likely prevented the drone from getting completely submerged & sinking to the bottom of the lake, however they also made it unreachable via boat, and from what we could tell, the marsh area was not solid enough to walk on.

We tried to get as close as we could from both the middle of the lake, and also a narrow canal that wraps around the marsh area, but could not see the drone. We also deploy another drone to see if we could spot it from the sky, to no avail. Although I should mention, the controller regained connection to the drone when we got close, so I had some hope that the drone wasn’t totaled.

We pivot to plan B — the rental we were staying at had 3 kayaks, so we head back to shore to regroup and attempt a 2nd rescue mission.

Of course, when we get back a bunch of people had arrived that I had to greet, and I even got roped into retelling the story of my recent proposal.

~45 minutes later, we embark on attempt #2. We tied the three kayaks to the boat & towed them out to the crash area, where three of us embarked onto the kayaks. I had brought a gallon ziplock bag to keep the controller dry, so I could bring it with me on the Kayak. When we reach the marsh area, my friend Tim — who thankfully had knee-high rubber boots in his truck that he put on — finds a spot of solid-seeming ground, and very carefully transitioned out of his kayak to begin making progress on foot.

As he’s walking, I’m using nearby landmarks to give him search vectors to follow… and after a few short minutes of looking, he finds the drone. It was halfway submerged, physically undamaged but definitely soaked. The cause of the crash was obvious — one of the props on the rear right motor was completely missing, it must have snapped off mid-flight. I had him remove the battery immediately, and we made our way back to the boat & from there back to shore.

Tim gave me Sillica packets he had in his camera case; I put one in the drone’s battery tray, and then sealed it with 2 other sillica packs in a gallon ziplock bag and promptly forgot about it for the remainder of the weekend; getting fucked up on the lake with my lover and closest friends.

When we returned home, I removed the drone from the bag & put it in front of an AC vent to let the cool, dry air further remove any lingering moisture. Left it there for 2 more days before I built up the courage to test it out…

And it fucking works like it’s brand new, no lingering issues whatsoever besides another aborted startup on the same motor as the last time (I replaced the missing prop). I took it for a quick test flight, and am currently awaiting an order of OEM DJI props before flying it any further.

So I hope this will serve as a reminder to not make the same dumb mistake ignoring obvious red flags like I did — trust your gut!

Also, a question: during the hectic immediate aftermath of the crash, my controller showed a recording of the crash itself — I was not recording prior to the crash, so there must have been some automated system that began recording when it detected a loss of stable flight. Does anybody know if such crash videos are saved on the drone’s internal memory, and if so where I could find it? It’s not on my SD card.

I think it would help soften the content a ton and make people more likely to hear him out.

There’s a lot of speculation on his mental state; if it’s true that he’s actually doing alright, it would really suck that his mental illness is being used to discredit his points.

Idk, I want to hear him out because he did grow on me over the years and feel like he at least deserves that — and tbh his pessimism has sometimes turned out warranted in the past — but his videos are just brutal to engage with. It’s whiplash going from that to Show Me State Of Mind haha