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Archive for outboard

Design Chart to prevent outboard motors from flipping into boats – UPDATED Feb 2021

We updated our Design Chart to Prevent Outboard Motors From Entering / Flipping Into The Boat After Striking Submerged Objects today (3 February 2021). Primary additions include: Auto detection of floating or submerged hazards using sonar, radar, infrared, fish finders, depth finders, lasers, computer vision and other technologies combined with the potential to automatically take […]

Preventing Outboards Flipping in Boats: Supplement 1

We previously published, Approaches to Prevent Outboard Motors From Flipping Into Boats After Striking Floating or Submerged Objects, and twice updated this extensive list of approaches. Our last update was published in 2018. This time we published a separate 2020 supplement to the 2018 third edition of the report. Many new methods have come on […]

Rex Chambers passed 15 June 2019

We are sorry to learn of the passing of Rex Chambers, well known professional bass fisherman. He spoke out about outboard motors breaking off and flipping into boats after his May 2014 accident on Lake Wheeler in Alabama. In that accident, his 250 horsepower Mercury outboard came in on him and Danny Pettus. Both men […]

The Leash: Bassmaster Tournament: ACA outboard flipped into boat accident

American Christian Academy (ACA) of Tuscaloosa Alabama’s bass fishing team was fishing the 2019 Bassmaster Southern High School Open on Lake Guntersville (Alabama). Mike Wilkins tells the story on video above of how 295 boats took off that morning. Mike, his son Hunter Williams, and another high school angler, Jackson Elder, ran out about 45 […]

Log strike impact mapping / charting invention

Our Log strike impact mapping / charting invention disclosure below was posted on 2 March 2019. We will make no changes to the text below the line following this paragraph except to correct misspellings, punctuation, and to update html/computer codes and links. Any updates to the invention will be posted below the invention disclosure. Log […]

Mercury patents log strike monitoring system

Brunswick / Mercury Marine was issued U.S. Patent 10,214,271 Systems and Methods for Monitoring Underwater Impacts to Marine Propulsion Devices on 26 February 2019. Steven J. Gonring and Mark D. Curtis are listed as the inventors. The patent teaches detecting rate of trim (rate of tilt) to determine an impact occurred. If the drive is […]

Why outboards break off bass boats paper

In our continuing coverage of large outboard motors breaking off and flipping into boats it is obvious that most incidents in recent years involve bass boats. Some reasons are obvious: bass boats run fast, bass anglers are in a hurry in bass tournaments, and bass hang out in shallow water. However this paper digs much […]

Kickup bracket with jack plate patent application

David Vance Jr. filed a patent application for a jack plate integrated with a kickup bracket. The kickup portion of the assembly is chained to prevent over rotation of the outboard when a submerged object is struck. The patent application was published 22 November 2018. Mr. Vance, the inventor, says this design is for faster […]

Design Chart to prevent outboards from flipping into boats – UPDATED

We updated our Design Chart to Prevent Outboard Motors From Entering / Flipping Into The Boat After Striking Submerged Objects today (23 October 2018). The primary addition was adding the option to Minimize the Hazard of the Outboard Entering the boat by killing the engine when the outboard breaks loose from the boat. The industry […]

Large Outboard Motor flipped into boat list updated

We updated our list of large outboard motors breaking off and flipping into boats on 7 October 2018 and are posting it today. We continue to see example after example of large outboard motors breaking off and flipping into boats. We encourage the boating industry to read our list of ways to prevent them. Outboard […]