Quagga in Enginge Passageways

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chrisut

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My houseboat was not used very much last year and sat in the buoy field at wahweap. Last spring the outdrives were opened up and cleaned out, inspected, etc. The storage yards guys are saying that boats coming out this year are worse than they were last year. Talking to the mechanics they are recommending open the outdrive cases again.
does anyone have any experience or advice on this? I'd rather not spend the $1300 to open the outdrives cases up if I don't need to, but at the same time, having to be towed out of the middle of the lake, or trying to tow my 60'houseboat with a skiboat doesnt sound like much fun.
thanks in advance!
 
Someone needs to come up with an engine lift that will lift the outboards completely out of the water when not in use, like the lifts on bass boats, but higher. Sq
 
Our houseboat was in the water last summer from mid-April to mid-November at Bullfrog where the quaggas aren't supposed to be as bad, but what I saw when I removed the lower drives for some winter service concerned me. A lot.

To access one of the bolts to remove the lower drive meant that I had to remove a round metal plate on the drive. This plate sits under the water. It doesn't have a gasket under it, but it does fit as tightly as two flat aluminum plates can fit together. In spite of the limited water infiltration, I found a quagga inside as big as my thumb nail. It had to have been carried in as a veliger where it grew inside the enclosed space.

I don't worry so much about engine cooling passages and the passages that discharge water since they get hot enough to arrest quagga growth and kill any that moved into those areas before the motor got up to temperature. But there are intake passages where the water has little to no temperature rise. I am thinking of the series of holes along the side of a lower unit, the passages through the lower drive, into the raw water pump, and then through an intake tube before getting to the engine's recirculating pump. All of that seems at risk.

We were able to make some modifications to our drive mounting that allow our drives to tilt clear of the water. We now do that in the parts of the year when we don't get freezing weather. When it's cold, we decided to spend the money to pull the boat from the water and keep it high and dry. This is one of those times I would like to find the south-ender that infested our lake so I can send them a bill for my potion of the millions of dollars that quaggas in the lake will end up costing all of us a boat owners and taxpayers.
 
Beside the southender at fault I also think many of our government agencies dropped the ball in a big way. No vision on how to address this problem when it was first detected and the inability to move quickly enough and strong enough. It almost looked like a wait and see attitude until it was to late.
 
Endurance said:
Our houseboat was in the water last summer from mid-April to mid-November at Bullfrog where the quaggas aren't supposed to be as bad, but what I saw when I removed the lower drives for some winter service concerned me. A lot.
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I saw the same thing when I dropped the lower units on our out-drives to change the impellers before we relaunched this last March; mussels inside the case. There weren't a ton, but I'm worried about the future as they get more prevalent in Bullfrog. Regrettably, there's no way to get those drives tilted high enough to be out of the water, but we're going to be pulling the boat every year for the winter and get it decontaminated. I'm thinking that will also involve dropping the lower units to clean them out. I'm also considering giving the Barnacle Stop mentioned in another post here a try on the out-drives and other intakes to see if it delivers on the promises.

I'm wondering how long it would have taken the mussels to make it to the north end of the lake if the new Halls marina store hadn't been brought up lake from Wahweap, supposedly covered in mussels that were removed only after the store was in place.
 
birdsnest said:
Beside the southender at fault I also think many of our government agencies dropped the ball in a big way. No vision on how to address this problem when it was first detected and the inability to move quickly enough and strong enough. It almost looked like a wait and see attitude until it was to late.
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We tried. We were ignored. Utah tried to help, but w/o help from the Department of Interior it was a futile help.
 
I wonder what the costs will be for quagga removal on the rental boats etc. none of this will be cheap and who foots the bill on that!?!
o_O
 
WOW.........as a lifelong "South Ender" as you refer to it, I am pretty disturbed by how you just decided to throw the blame blanket over all of us. You'd think you were ready to proclaim a civil war over this. We are all in the same situation now.

I miss having Shad Rallies, where I got to meet some really great people that are "North Enders"
 
Lake Bum said:
WOW.........as a lifelong "South Ender" as you refer to it, I am pretty disturbed by how you just decided to throw the blame blanket over all of us. You'd think you were ready to proclaim a civil war over this. We are all in the same situation now.

I miss having Shad Rallies, where I got to meet some really great people that are "North Enders"
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I believe he is referring to the fact that someone at the south end of the lake introduced our new little pest. My guess is he never intended it to be construed as those that frequent the lake over the years. Now, having said that, Someone from the south end did introduce the little buggars. It could have been a out of ignorance or carelessness we may never know. We do however have to deal with it to enjoy OUR lake. North or South. For me I have Houseboats at both ends of the lake so I guess I am currently a Northsouthner.
 
it was believed at one point to have come from night launching of boats from Nevada at antelope point public ramp, the boat in question had attached muscles when it was pulled from the water and when asked when he launched he stated he moved the cones to launch at night because he was late for his houseboat trip.
 
Heavens no, I don't disparage our friends to the south. We don't know much about that "day that will live in infamy" when Lake Powell acquired its first breeding population of quagga mussels. We don't know if the person that brought them lied at the checkpoint, drove around it, or didn't understand questions like "has your boat been in a lake with quagga mussels. We don't know if they had a bass boat, a cruiser, a houseboat, or a wakeboard boat. We don't know whether to call them a he or a she. We don't know if they hailed from Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah, or New Jersey. All we know is that they visited the south end of the lake. Hence the description"south-ender" is about as specific as I can do when referring to that him or her.

If anyone is disturbed at this reference, I have two things to say. First, I am sorry. I don't mean to disturb. Second, Welcome! I have been disturbed for a long time.
 
I sure as heck have no desire to take sides on the southend/northend deal I was simply pointing out that there is more than enough blame to spread around. North, South, East, West, State, Feds. on and on. I was a marine mechanic on Powell for 10 years and never differentiated those from uplake or downlake. Does it really matter how it was introduced? Dealing with the quaqqa is issue now. By the way, I quess I am a southerner.Page 10 years. Lake Bum is right, when I wrote that it felt like I was proclaiming my allegiance. It' our lake, we are in this together and if a solution is ever presented it will take all of us to implement it.
 
Quaqqa mussel removal on the rental boats will be huge and price will be passed on to customers. If you have checked prices lately for a rental houseboat it's clear no one is shy about putting prices on them.
 
ROSCOELAB said:
it was believed at one point to have come from night launching of boats from Nevada at antelope point public ramp, the boat in question had attached muscles when it was pulled from the water and when asked when he launched he stated he moved the cones to launch at night because he was late for his houseboat trip.
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Really? How much merit does this story have? That is essentially how I pictured it happening. "Hey man, where you at!?..." "Sorry bro, I am at the top of the ramp but there are these tall orange things in the way and I don't know what to do..." "Just move em dude! And get down here ASAP!" "Oh, OK!" It had better been the best houseboat trip of all time! The path for curing cancer was found or the next Abe Lincoln was conceived.

Mr. Keisling sums my feelings up quite well...
 
I don't think it was one boat that brought them here. When they started to search boats it started as more of a policing program instead of a education process.

The attitude of boaters was it was just the park service being a pain in the ***. I was on many trips with boaters friends that didn't understand what it was all about. And they just figured they could get around the park service and all was good.

Later it became more about education but it was too late. I bet there were a lot of boats infected early on.

When they offered the online course that you could take so you could go through the inspection stations faster I did it. Mostly to save time. I was blown away at what it was all about when I learned from the course. If everyone had to take the course early on I bet it would have turned out differently.

Mike
 
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