Last week I had a good friend call me to go fishing on Thursday. Hed just received his brand new boat and was itching to put it on the water and see how the boat performed. Hed taken the boat out for a short run on Wednesday just to make sure everything was working ok. We planned to fish the reefs for sheepshead, but as Thursday came closer the weather forecast changed from 5-10kt. Winds to 15-20kt gusting to 30kt. So we decided to fish at the jetties and stay inside the south jetties shielded from the wind and waves. We were able to anchor up and caught one fish had a few more bites and then things slowed down. We eased up to the rocks with the trolling motor and pulled the anchor so we could move to another spot. We lowered the boat motor, went to crank it and nothing happened. The check motor light on the dash flashed, we had good batter readings, but the motor would not turn over. Now we were at the mercy of the wind and current that was rushing out of the jetties.
We were drifting quickly and the anchor would not grab and the trolling motor could not fight the current. He was able to get the company that rigged the boat on the phone and after several different trials we were able to figure out that when the boat was rigged the wiring going to the starter was just a little to tight. When the motor was trimmed all the way up, it caused the wires on the starter to pull loose. We were able to get everything hooked back up and get the boat started, but during the 15-20 minutes it took us to get everything straight we had drifted all the way across the shipping channel. There was a pretty heavy fog just outside the jetties and had we been pulled outside we would have been in some pretty rough water with no power. I was just getting ready to get on the phone with his tow service when the motor was cranked, but things could have still gotten ugly quickly for us. When we got back inshore and were talking about what had happened, he said one thing he had not done since receiving the boat, was to trim the motor