FLRiverDiver
Registered
Your find reminds us of one of ours, and though the purpose of this post is to outline the conservation of the motor, the whole story is interesting enough to tell here...
It was the summer of '83 or '84, me and my two long time dive "buddy" brothers "R" and "D" (buddy in quotes as we are strictly solo when river diving) were on a routine artifact dive in the St. Mary's River. For non FL or GA area people, it makes up the eastern state boundry between the two states.
The first one of us down secures the anchor--which that day was R. He immediately came back up and informed D and I that the anchor had landed in a boat!! Decending to the bottom we saw that indeed the anchor had fallen in a boat. Sitting there on the bottom was an 18 foot Ouachita flat bottom aluminum boat and a 9.9 hp Mercury motor. The partially filled gas can was waving in the current overhead still connected to the motor by the fuel line. The gear lever was in forward and the paddle was still secured by gunnell reinforcers.
The good deal of sand washed into the boat was to be expected, what wasn't was the large conical pile of average softball sized limestone rocks. We removed the rocks and most of the sand and salvaged the rig. After our remaining couple of dives we took the boat/motor to D's house as he had the best place to keep it.
The boat was registered in Georgia so we researched the number and located the owner. The story he related to us is as follows: The boat had gone down January the year before (that's around 18 months). He had newly moved to the area and had gone up river to collect rocks for his wife to make a rock garden. He was coming back down river around 9:00 pm (very dark in January). He went to full throttle to pick up some speed, after which the bow went under and as a result, with all the rocks, the boat literally sank from under him. He swam to shore and somehow was able to get through the swampy woods (in the dark) to civilization. The area where this happened is tantamount to being in the middle of the Okefenokee swamp!
Not having much of an idea where in the river this happened his couple of attempts to find the spot were futile. He collected his insurance and wrote it off.
Back to the motor--we mostly dissembled it and cleaned and lubricated parts. The only part needing replacement was the throttle return spring. After putting it back together and feeding it some fresh gas--believe it or not-- it fired up and ran on the first pull! Now like Paul Harvey you need the rest of the story.
This motor refurbishing had occured during the time we were locating the owner. We told him that we had recovered and cleaned up the boat and "fixed" the motor and would be glad to return it to him for a nominal fee to cover our time in doing all the work--we suggested $100--to which he was quite agreeable (after all he had collected insurance on it's loss).
He showed up several days later, unannounced, at D's house. D was not home but his wife was. For some unknown reason he became very arragant and hostile to her. She advised him to leave and get in contact with D.
When we heard about his actions, we decided to keep the rig--which we were legally entitled to do. Being registered in GA it fell under it's jurisdiction and thus it's salvage laws. At that time the law was basically, after being "lost" in excess of a year, "finders/keepers." As a result of his treatment of D's wife, we sent him a certified letter with a copy of the pertinent statute and informed of our problem with his actions, and that he would under no circumstances be getting the rig returned, and he would best not have any additional contact with any of us.
Epilogue: We used that boat/motor as a secondary dive boat for around 10 years--until some dirt bag stole the motor. We still have the boat!
FLRiverDiver
It was the summer of '83 or '84, me and my two long time dive "buddy" brothers "R" and "D" (buddy in quotes as we are strictly solo when river diving) were on a routine artifact dive in the St. Mary's River. For non FL or GA area people, it makes up the eastern state boundry between the two states.
The first one of us down secures the anchor--which that day was R. He immediately came back up and informed D and I that the anchor had landed in a boat!! Decending to the bottom we saw that indeed the anchor had fallen in a boat. Sitting there on the bottom was an 18 foot Ouachita flat bottom aluminum boat and a 9.9 hp Mercury motor. The partially filled gas can was waving in the current overhead still connected to the motor by the fuel line. The gear lever was in forward and the paddle was still secured by gunnell reinforcers.
The good deal of sand washed into the boat was to be expected, what wasn't was the large conical pile of average softball sized limestone rocks. We removed the rocks and most of the sand and salvaged the rig. After our remaining couple of dives we took the boat/motor to D's house as he had the best place to keep it.
The boat was registered in Georgia so we researched the number and located the owner. The story he related to us is as follows: The boat had gone down January the year before (that's around 18 months). He had newly moved to the area and had gone up river to collect rocks for his wife to make a rock garden. He was coming back down river around 9:00 pm (very dark in January). He went to full throttle to pick up some speed, after which the bow went under and as a result, with all the rocks, the boat literally sank from under him. He swam to shore and somehow was able to get through the swampy woods (in the dark) to civilization. The area where this happened is tantamount to being in the middle of the Okefenokee swamp!
Not having much of an idea where in the river this happened his couple of attempts to find the spot were futile. He collected his insurance and wrote it off.
Back to the motor--we mostly dissembled it and cleaned and lubricated parts. The only part needing replacement was the throttle return spring. After putting it back together and feeding it some fresh gas--believe it or not-- it fired up and ran on the first pull! Now like Paul Harvey you need the rest of the story.
This motor refurbishing had occured during the time we were locating the owner. We told him that we had recovered and cleaned up the boat and "fixed" the motor and would be glad to return it to him for a nominal fee to cover our time in doing all the work--we suggested $100--to which he was quite agreeable (after all he had collected insurance on it's loss).
He showed up several days later, unannounced, at D's house. D was not home but his wife was. For some unknown reason he became very arragant and hostile to her. She advised him to leave and get in contact with D.
When we heard about his actions, we decided to keep the rig--which we were legally entitled to do. Being registered in GA it fell under it's jurisdiction and thus it's salvage laws. At that time the law was basically, after being "lost" in excess of a year, "finders/keepers." As a result of his treatment of D's wife, we sent him a certified letter with a copy of the pertinent statute and informed of our problem with his actions, and that he would under no circumstances be getting the rig returned, and he would best not have any additional contact with any of us.
Epilogue: We used that boat/motor as a secondary dive boat for around 10 years--until some dirt bag stole the motor. We still have the boat!
FLRiverDiver
