How does a boat sink in 15 minutes?

[Daydreamer22]

Back in the 90s I had a 19 foot jet boat with through transom exhaust. A short section of rubber hose connected the exhaust manifolds to the transom fittings and had rotted from the inside.

Launched the boat and sped off across a lake. Within five minutes we had water up to the seats and coming in faster than the bilge pump could handle it. Immediately turned for shore and beached the boat.

Any further out, or if the engine had stalled the boat would have been lost well within 15 minutes. Don't know the exact volume, but the cooling system moves a lot of water.

[Omatako]

Break the keel off a sailboat and leave a 10 inch wide by 5 foot long hole in the bottom of the boat.

The boat sinks in 15 seconds, the other 14 minutes and 45 seconds you float in the water (assuming you weren't down below when it happened) and wonder what happened.

How do I know this? I'm not answering that but . . . .



That used to have a keel attached to it.

[dmchose]

Watched a 128 foot tug we were salvaging sink in about a " very looong 60 sec.". Well kinda watched. I was actually running as fast as I could away from the mooring wall still in a dry suit. It is a very violent and fast affair. If anyone was on board there would have been no way to get off it. Stern bobbed twice and bow rose, whole tug twisted as much as the 3 inch hawsers would allow. Tug became vertical and then was gone.
Bow and stern lines snapped and spring lines became guitar strings melded into a hazard that took a whole shift before management came up with an idea how to break them without breaking anyone in the process.