'05 Optimax 115 no water psi

[LwnmwnMan2]

Dad and I were going to go fishing today, went out to South Center.

Took off from the access, went around the first point to the left.. "BBBEEEEEEEEPPP!!!!"

Shut the motor down immediately, let it set, trying to figure out what was going on.

Started the motor back up after 5 minutes of looking around, and noticed the PSI was about 5-7, with no water coming out the back of the motor anywhere.

If you lightly throttled the motor up, it would push the PSI up, but still no water.

Immediately realized there's a problem and shut the boat back down again. It was fun trying to move the boat back to the access with the trolling motor in the 20ish mph wind, but what to do.

Didn't even have a chance to take the minnows out of the bag and put in the bucket.

Anyways, pump shot?? Just plugged?? Opinions??

I'm wondering if I didn't happen to pick a leaf up, especially idling at the access waiting for my dad, since there were some on top of the water from the trees??

[LwnmwnMan2]

Just thought I'd let you all know what was wrong, incase someone comes on down the road, does a search for Optimax and this helps.

Took the boat back to the dealer this morning. Told them what was wrong. They had us pull around back with the boat, hooked the water up to the motor, took the air hose and blew out the outlet for the water out the back of the motor, and that was it.

Turns out that we had a piece of sand or something get up in there and block the outlet. In 50+ years of boating, my dad's never heard of such a thing.

Anyways, gotta like that service department. Never even had us unhook the boat from the truck, wham, bam, thank you ma'am and we were out the door again.

Yes, I realize it was an easy fix, but at the same time, I've had easy fixes before whether boat, car, truck or one of my mowers, and have had dealers say "park it over there, we'll get to it soon".

[OptiMax]

It happened to our pontoon a lot this summer (low water=picking up a lot of dump).

I usually end up in the middle of the lake sucking a couple mouthfuls of water in my mouth and blowing it through the water outlet hole. Generally does the trick.

[LwnmwnMan2]

I figured I'd carry a can of compressed air, kinda like people use on their computer keyboard.

[OptiMax]

I have thought of that but haven't remembered to do it yet!