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When Volvo introduced its revolutionary forward looking IPS pod drive a couple of years ago its marketing machine concentrated on three important factors: easy handling thanks to the joystick, better performance consumption with less horsepower, and that it was safer then anything due to a water tight system in case the unexpected happened. These pictures shown on the Thailandboating website above show an IPS pod set up failure which nearly sank a fairly new fourteen meter Sunseeker sport cruiser with only ten hours on its engine clocks in December 2008 in Thailand. This failure happened due to the rubber gasket which is supposed to block water from coming in, and go in operation if the drives are sheared off. In this case the drives did not shear off and the gasket did not work, and only the water tight bulkhead prevented this boat from totally sinking. Still the consequences are that all the electronics and generator set will need changing, and the engines thanks to some lucky and fast yard repairs can be rebuilt. The Sunseeker in this IPS pod failure is a Portofino 47 model. Introduced in 2007, the Portofino 47 is a hard top sport cruiser with two-ensuite double cabins and was offered with shaft drive or IPS pod propulsion option. The Portofino 47 came as a replacement to the 2003 introduced Portofino 46, with softer lines and the addition of a hard-top, although an open version was also produced.
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What caused the IPS drives and gasket to fail is some numb nut who ran it in the ground. Had this boat shafts nothing would have prevented water entering through the holes the grounding shafts would have created.
ReplyDeleteFor IPS drives to shear off cleanly you would need to hit the actual legs a sharp blow. I have seen ALL the photos, the prop cones are undamaged and both drives look like they have been pushed outwards. I very much doubt these drives hit an underwater obstruction head on. As has already been said a shaft powered boat would have suffered much the same.
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