Electronic control failures...

[Pascal]

This was posted elsewhere, happened yeast day at sailfish marina in WPB

Witnesses reported that one engine (MTU) stalled and the other one went to full power. controls and shut down switch would not work. Boat partially sunk and had to be re floated / pumped

 

[Avenger]

I saw it on another site too. Must have been moving pretty fast when he met the dock.

It wasn't mentioned on the other site, but it makes sense that it had to be refloated. There's just too much damage for it not to try to be a submarine.

 

[Genesis]

Back when I was buying Gigabite a 42 Bertram was coming into the pocket at the marina where we were being hauled for the survey.

He had electronic controls and when the captain went into reverse (while crawling ahead) to stop the boat in the pocket the controls failed to shift and as the lever was advanced the throttle opened as commanded -- with the gears in forward!

He rammed the front of the pocket with a fairly nasty "crunch!"

The boat was moving at near-dead-slow at the time, but it left quite the impression on me; cables do fail too, of course, but you're more-likely to notice it immediately when either the lever doesn't move (if it binds) or moves FAR too easily (if it snaps or comes detached from the lever on the gearbox) as opposed to an electronic lever that has only a detent and no physical feedback.

He still had the shutdown buttons of course and throttle control, and the damage was minimal -- but.....

An engine going un-commanded full-astern while backing into a slip would make for a hell of a mess, and it looks like it did exactly that.

(I kept my cables despite liking how the electronic controls looked -- and the ease of having multiple stations.)

 

[saltshaker]

WOW! Was anyone seriously hurt? They must have hit pretty hard to do that much damage. How did they shut it down? Either something is missing in that story or the captain had some really bad luck. The electronic controls are separate systems for each engine. The odds of losing one engine and then the controls of the other would seem to be extremely high. The throttle and shift controls wouldn't effect the shut down so the only thing I can think of is they had a serious electrical failure that caused all of this.

 

[rsmith]

Several 65's did this when the DDEC's came out. I'll keep my inefficient mechanical Detroits thank you!

 

[saltshaker]

Good thing there wasn't a boat in the slip on his port side.

 

[Jaxfishgyd]

The 60' Hatt I captained in 2003 (it was actually 53' that had the extra 7' put on by a company in Ft Lauderdale)... Had electronic controls at all 3 stations...BUT they did leave the 3 CABLE controls in place 'just in case'..

 

[Genesis]

I have a PHYSICAL ignition switch on my car. I also have a physical clutch that I can push in should push come to shove. (Many "automatic" transmissions today have no physical linkage at all -- they're just switches telling the computer to do something, and that goes double for "push-button" start!)

I had physical shutdowns on my boat with cable pull backup going to the same STOP lever that the solenoids were attached to.

I have this thing about machinery that is completely controlled by a computer which may have bugs in the code or do unexpected things due to various failures. Especially machinery that can easily kill me if it misbehaves.

 

[thoward]

WOW! Was anyone seriously hurt? They must have hit pretty hard to do that much damage. How did they shut it down? Either something is missing in that story or the captain had some really bad luck. The electronic controls are separate systems for each engine. The odds of losing one engine and then the controls of the other would seem to be extremely high. The throttle and shift controls wouldn't effect the shut down so the only thing I can think of is they had a serious electrical failure that caused all of this.

No one was seriously hurt. The story is on THT but one engine quit and the other had electronic controls fail which ended up in full reverse(2300rpm).

 

[Fanfare]

There is also the problem of nearby lightning strikes. I have read of several examples of diesel electronically controlled engines being totally disabled and having to be towed in. See http://shearmadness72.com/ for one report of ruined ECM modules.

 

[jim rosenthal]

I'm with Karl on this. Cable controls aren't nearly as flash but they are a lot more reliable.... and I can fix them myself. I wonder, though, how much difference they really make on modern CR engines that are governed electronically anyway.

 

[tslanejr]

The 60' Hatt I captained in 2003 (it was actually 53' that had the extra 7' put on by a company in Ft Lauderdale)... Had electronic controls at all 3 stations...BUT they did leave the 3 CABLE controls in place 'just in case'..

Was it a MY or Convertible?

 

[Jaxfishgyd]

MY,,,,,,, Name of it was "Nano Nano" when it was in Miami