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Stupidity of the day


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7 hours ago, twbm said:

Not boat related but have, on no less than three occasions over the years, caught the water from a U-bend in a bowl then emptied said bowl in to the sink I've just disconnected. 

 

    

I have only done that once as an apprentice, The boss passed it up to me as he was twisted round behind the pedestal basin and told me to pour it away. Good job he could see the funny side of things even with a wet head.

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Also not boat related.

Back in the days of two pin mains plugs my dear Mother bought herself one of them new fangled VHF wireless sets.

She decided that the wire was longer than it neededto be so she switched the thing off and took her minary scissord to the twin flex.

Huge BANG, a 3/16" hole in her millinery scissors and an arm that took a month before she could use it properly.

So nearly an orphan!

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Years ago,when I was a marina rat,and had 240v plug-in,I had a 240v light hanging in the galley (the only 240v appliance on the boat).It was an old brass fitting,just live and neutral...Light stopped working,cable had snapped at the live terminal.I left it for ages,as I had 12v lighting too..Eventually I came to fix it,and being lazy,I just brushed the live wire with the back of my finger to see if it was live,no shock,so I figured it was switched off (not realising that I didn't get shocked,because being on the boat,my body wasn't earthed!)...Being lazy again:judge:,I went to bite off the live wire's insulation with my teeth!? As I did that,the neutral wire touched my chin!!!..I realised it was live then!!!!??

Best smack in the mouth I've had so far!!??....And i've had a few!!!?:P

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On 21/11/2020 at 11:18, twbm said:

Not boat related but have, on no less than three occasions over the years, caught the water from a U-bend in a bowl then emptied said bowl in to the sink I've just disconnected. 

Did this more often than I ought to admit to, on hireboat turnrounds ...

On 21/11/2020 at 11:18, twbm said:

Edit to add .. and whilst attempting to sort out an unshipped rudder, undid the huge nut on the swan neck, to watch the rudder fall out of the back of the boat and effectively nail us to the canal bed.  To this day I'm not sure how I thought undoing the nut was going to help.   

We regularly used a special bolt with a ring welded to it to attach a rope passed through the rudder tube to pull a bent rudder back into place after straightening the stock - I was doing this single handed on a rudder with a non-standard thread, and no, it was not in by enough threads, and yes, it did come out and yes, I needed a crown on the front tooth it took out ...

 

Back at FBS in the 80s, I was often alone in the workshop - I once offered up an LH150 box to a Lister SR2, which involves a fiddly procedure to engage the drive gear for the oil pump. Success, then the engine, which was (mea culpa) not secured onto the engine bench, tipped back under the weight of the gearbox and I was left supporting it and wondering what to do next.

 

But I think the most stupid and life-threatening stunt I pulled was on an unconverted motor boat (Avon, wooden, does it still exist, I wonder), where the joins in the top planks did not line up with the stands and mast, so all just held in place by the side cloths. Knowing this I carefully undid the sidecloths and yet a few minutes later walked nonchalantly along the top planks, at least as far as the first unsupported join, then I was deposited into the hold, followed by the top planks - and again, everyone else had gone home, I'd not have been missed until coffee time the next morning.

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A few weeks after buying our boat, when setting off from an overnight mooring the engine kept turning over but wouldn't start. With my very limited mechanical knowledge I lifted the deck boards and spent 10 minutes trying to investigate before finally deciding to call RCR out. Then my wife suddenly noticed that the engine pull stop hadn't retracted when I'd pulled it up to turn off the engine the previous day.

 

I was relieved but highly embarrassed and she's never let me forget it.

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I had a customer with a Volvo 340 which had a spare blanked off apperture on the dash. I said to the customer I have a nice little clock that will fit in there nicely. He said go ahead, so I did. I fitted the clock from the passengers seat, 'room to do it'. Wired it up and set the time. I then moved the car to park it up, looked down and I saw another clock, a big one next to the speedo and as big, about 4'' dia.  I couldn't believe this, that the owner hadn't declared that it already had a clock, he was stumped too. All I could think of that he couldn't tell the time and didn't know what it was. I tried to see if he wore a wrist watch but couldn't see one, anyway he said he liked it and kept it.

Edited by bizzard
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I once had a Godin upright solid fuel stove which was good in that you loaded it from the top and could get a lot of coal in. However on one occasion I was a bit too over zealous, not helped by the fact that the vent got stuck in the open position and and consequently the fire and stove became unbelievably hot.  Alarmed by seeing the fire roaring away and the fact I wanted to get to bed, I decided to douse the fire a little with water, and poured a jug full over it.

 

Not surprisingly there was a huge amount of steam but it did the job and I was able to go to bed, only to find the next morning that the flue had become blocked as the doused coal had turned to cement. I had to spend the day with a hammer and chisel chipping away at it. 

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Another non-boat one....

In my childhood I was very interested in science.   One cold evening in my bedroom kept warm by an old fashioned single bar 1kW electric fire I decided to check whether the element was magnetic........

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2 hours ago, Grassman said:

A few weeks after buying our boat, when setting off from an overnight mooring the engine kept turning over but wouldn't start. With my very limited mechanical knowledge I lifted the deck boards and spent 10 minutes trying to investigate before finally deciding to call RCR out. Then my wife suddenly noticed that the engine pull stop hadn't retracted when I'd pulled it up to turn off the engine the previous day.

 

I was relieved but highly embarrassed and she's never let me forget it.

This was one of the classic Sunday morning "breakdown" calls from hirers starting the engine on their own for the first time - in the days before mobile phones, if they were at e.g. Priors Hardwick and had walked 20 minutes up to the village to the phone box you had to go out to them just to be sure ... cellphones revolutionised the breakdown business!

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38 minutes ago, zenataomm said:

Heavily raining.

Started engine, fitted tiller extension, ran up to untie front end, ran back to let go back rope, pushed back end out before stepping onto counter.

So far ok.

About to select astern to reverse out from mooring when I spotted cat smiling at me from towpath.

Swore, leapt ashore, scooped up cat, ran to the front end as back had drifted too far for further heroic straddling.

Climbed onto gunnel and edged my way back with struggling cat.  Employed one free hand to alternatively fumble for hand rail, and then wipe the blood out of my eyes inflicted by cat enthusiastically wind milling his razor sharp scythes at me.

Due to restricted eye sight and concentrating on restricting the squirming  cat who was displaying not only a deep hatred for me but also a remarkable similarity to a dozen eels, I reached the engine 'ole where the hand rail finishes. 

Imagine my blind (literally) panic when I realised I was holding on to nothing.

I reached out frantically to clutch onto a handhold and with short lived glee encountered boat pole.

Couple walking by on towpath applauded my skills at tightrope'ish, cat juggling and enquired if there would be an encore? 

Laughing heartily through gritted teeth I achieved the counter while alternatively waving cat and then boat pole above my head, thus equilibrium was maintained.

 

I peeled the cat off me like Velcro and unceremoniously projected him towards his bed opposite the stove ......... in which was casually watching me, our own cat.

Upon arrival of the doppelgänger levels of activity and noise were accelerated to levels mere imagination would never have anticipated.

After about 2 minutes of identical cats screaming at each other and bouncing of hanging plates I stopped in a bridge hole and ordered one of them to go ashore toot sweet and without ceremony.

I never knew which one it was that slinked off without a backward glance, but the one that remained glowered at me all the way to Hemel Hempstead.

 

Pure gold. Don't have a cat but have the company of all the neighbours' cats. Three sets of twins and then a few randoms arrived recently. It took a while of WTF? to realise that some had identical siblings and they weren't teleporting across the garden.

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4 hours ago, Richard Carter said:

Did this more often than I ought to admit to, on hireboat turnrounds ...

We regularly used a special bolt with a ring welded to it to attach a rope passed through the rudder tube to pull a bent rudder back into place after straightening the stock - I was doing this single handed on a rudder with a non-standard thread, and no, it was not in by enough threads, and yes, it did come out and yes, I needed a crown on the front tooth it took out ...

 

Back at FBS in the 80s, I was often alone in the workshop - I once offered up an LH150 box to a Lister SR2, which involves a fiddly procedure to engage the drive gear for the oil pump. Success, then the engine, which was (mea culpa) not secured onto the engine bench, tipped back under the weight of the gearbox and I was left supporting it and wondering what to do next.

 

But I think the most stupid and life-threatening stunt I pulled was on an unconverted motor boat (Avon, wooden, does it still exist, I wonder), where the joins in the top planks did not line up with the stands and mast, so all just held in place by the side cloths. Knowing this I carefully undid the sidecloths and yet a few minutes later walked nonchalantly along the top planks, at least as far as the first unsupported join, then I was deposited into the hold, followed by the top planks - and again, everyone else had gone home, I'd not have been missed until coffee time the next morning.

When we bought our butty Glen Knight offered to tow it back to its mooring. All went well until we needed to breast up, for cowley lock. 
I grabbed the snubber up on to Hadley’s ( Rail) top planks and ran down with the line, and breasted the boats.

In the lock a rather shocked Glen admitted there was a two foot gap in the top planks, and the cloths just sort of covered the gap.

 

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6 minutes ago, roland elsdon said:

When we bought our butty Glen Knight offered to tow it back to its mooring. All went well until we needed to breast up, for cowley lock. 
I grabbed the snubber up on to Hadley’s ( Rail) top planks and ran down with the line, and breasted the boats.

In the lock a rather shocked Glen admitted there was a two foot gap in the top planks, and the cloths just sort of covered the gap.

 

Hi Roland, that has the makings of a fine Tom & Jerry moment - I guess you didn't look down, then?

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Lumpy water yacht, many years ago, we'd booked her to come out of the water at a yard up the river at about 7pm on a November evening as that was the right tide for the docking berth.

 

We came in alongside the berth and I stepped over the guardrail to step ashore, instinctively reaching for the upper shrouds as a handhold as I did so.

 

Shame I'd forgotten that we'd taken the mast down an hour before to get under the low bridge between the mooring and the yard, and there weren't any shrouds to grab (my excuse being it was dark...).

 

I did manage to grab the toe rail on the way down and the skipper saw the look of shock on my face as it went past deck level and had turned away from the dock in time to prevent me being squashed.

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7 hours ago, Grassman said:

A few weeks after buying our boat, when setting off from an overnight mooring the engine kept turning over but wouldn't start. With my very limited mechanical knowledge I lifted the deck boards and spent 10 minutes trying to investigate before finally deciding to call RCR out. Then my wife suddenly noticed that the engine pull stop hadn't retracted when I'd pulled it up to turn off the engine the previous day.

 

I was relieved but highly embarrassed and she's never let me forget it.

Similar on an old landy, the diesel was a replacement for a very thirsty petrol and engine stop was a bit of a bodge, anyway it took me almost the whole of a 30 mile journey to realise the refusal to do over 20 mph wasn't due to the engine being fecked just I hadn't pushed the stop in all the way

 

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12 hours ago, stablemabel said:

Bear in mind im a live aboard.i set sail in the boat heading for the boat yard to get some diesel a journey of 3 mile or so..when i got there i realised i hadnt got the money out of my little tea pot to pay for the diesel..so i set sail back to the mooring..moored up..went inside the boat ..got my money ..came out of the front door ..walked to the back of the boat

started the engine again and headed back to the boatyard..it was only when i was mooring up at the boat yard again that i realised what id done..

Similar... my boat neighbour asked if I would look after their elderly dog while they went out cruising for a few days... I suggested I could put the dog on their boat whilst I was at work...okay he replied. 

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13 hours ago, Awayonmyboat said:

Stepping off the boat today onto the marina pontoon with my glasses pushed up over the forehead - and watching them fall forward and drop gently in the water.

Yep, way too easy to forget. I normally wear a baseball cap and often rest my safety specs above the rim. Number of times I've taken the cap off and flirted a pair of specs into something rather unpleasant.

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Semi-trad. Lifted the hatch by the tiller to check on a calorifier leak we'd had fixed to see if there was any water in the bilge, decided there was not enough light so lifted the board forward of the hatch which was now bloody heavy due to one of the other owners having fitted checkerplate on top, so started walking it backwards to put it on the towpath. That's correct dear readers, i had forgotten about the lifted hatch and stepped back into thin air, luckily the exhaust silencer stopped my descent to the bilge, but not before i'd barked my entire shin and taken the cabin side to the armpit. Left me with a rather bloody shin and an underarm bruise the size of a small plate.

 

The leak was fixed though :D 

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On 20/11/2020 at 22:28, Leggers do it lying down said:

Currently re-wiring a complete disaster of a 12v system for a friend...Tracing the tunnel light live wire back to the stern,it went from a blue wire at the light,to black,to yellow and finally ended up as a red and white wire at the fuse box!?...All joined with insulation tape!!.?

Glad to see that you have managed to correct my wiring job :)

 

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Avoid buying a tube of shaving cream which bears any resemblance to a tube of toothpaste, especially if you're going to fish in your toilet bag for one or the other in poor light. I learned this lesson many years ago at a French camp site, after emerging from the bloc sanitaire bubbling at the mouth and tasting sickeningly soapy after cleaning my teeth with Parke Davis instead of Gibbs SR.

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