In relation to boating, this is probably one of the most fascinating series of events captured on video that I have ever seen. This is an ongoing situation and I will be following up with many more details and developments. For now, have a look at what I feel is an incredible story of events.

Today I spoke with Alfred Montaner, who owns Luxury Rib Tenders, which is a company based in Miami that specializes in restoring rigid inflatable boats. His scope of talents covers seemingly every type of RIB, from yacht tenders to very high-end law enforcement types. He was taking a 36-foot Fluid 10M "Black Betty" RIB for a sea trial, which involved running the boat in the kind of conditions it was designed for. The Fluid 10M being trialed is powered by two 300HP Mercury Verados, however the boat is designed to handle triple outboards, if required.

While running the boat fast over some moderate chop, the port engine became de-mounted, which I think is probably the worst kind of nightmare for most of us. The engine mount itself did not fail - the transom mounting bolts sheared their threads. This was the result of not using the Mercury-supplied engine mounting bolts. The outboard hung by its steering bar, but that soon broke free and the engine went to the bottom.

I want to also make very clear that the failure of the engine mounting bolts was not due to intentional negligence on the part of the riggers. It does however highlight the very serious consequences of that rigging error, and the need to strictly use the required parts without substitution.

I will add more details on that in the forthcoming article, however the video details most of it, and Alfred Montaner wanted to stress that these videos are shared to illustrate what can happen when rigging errors are made:

"The people from Fluid Watercraft were very bold in allowing me to post this video. Easily,it could have been swept under the rug. Once the incident happened, Boyd Tomkies and I both felt that this video can help bring awareness and insight to help others from having this happen again."


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The Verado is currently being serviced and we'll probably see more news on that on Montaner's channel.

I encourage you to have a look at the Luxury Rib Tenders website and Alfred Montaner's YouTube channel, because there is a lot of incredible content there.

For now, let's try not to turn this into any sort of 'what they should have done is this' kind of thing. We've all seen outboards lost on YouTube, but how often do we see them being recovered?

This is a collage of several videos and shows an overview of events:



Loss of outboard:


Recover of outboard (full dive video):


Damage assessment: