A lot of years ago when go fast boats were becoming a thing I suppose due to various TV shows, a buddy, with more money than brains bought a brand new 31ft twin v8 stern drive boat. It was his first boat ever. Before that thing he hadn't even been in so much as a canoe.
He called me one Sun afternoon and asked if I'd show him how to run it. He didn't know anything about launching it starting it, or driving it. I was in my early 30's then he was maybe 25 or so. I agreed, mainly because I the boat itself interested me more than a bit I suppose.
He came and got me, and we headed out to a ramp about an hour away. It was a private ramp with safe parking and calm water, It was also well up stream from the saltwater so it was good for flushing things out after a day in the salt.
After 9 tries he couldn't hit the ramp so I took over and put the boat in, parked his truck, and then went back and started the boat and let it warm up a bit. There's fuel at the dock, but both gauges were reading full so we didn't bother.
He said they told him both tanks were full when they dropped it off. (It turns out filling both tanks was the delivery driver's responsibility). The boat had just been dropped off the night before, shipped by the manufacturer in FL.
There was no way to physically check the fuel, the filler was in the bow deck and the tanks were midship under the floor.
He said the guy who dropped it off had run each motor on ears with a hose to show him it ran and they let each motor run about 15 minutes or so the day before.
We headed downstream, taking it easy at first to get the feel of it then I opened it up once out away from any docks or houses. We just about got fully up on plane at about 6 miles down river and it started to sputter, the right engine died first, then the second engine shut down and wouldn't restart. It was around 4pm on Sunday and there was zero traffic on the river since most of the usual crowd had gone home. I opened the engine cover, and starting checking things and right away saw there was no fuel to the motors, none at all. and I couldn't draw any out of the tanks either, but both gauges were sitting dead on the full mark. Back then cell phones were kind of crappy in outlying areas and his didn't have signal. The radio turns out was for show, it had a tiny 3ft antenna that couldn't reach anything more than a 1/4 mile or so away and all we could see is trees and marsh.
To keep the boat from drifting into the mud flats, I dropped anchor. I figured we had gone about 6 miles on the river when it died. We hadn't seen a single boat the whole time other
It was September, a week after Labor Day and we were dead in the water in the salt marsh area about two miles from the intercoastal up a rarely traveled river with no motors and nothing but a boat hook and a 30" canoe paddle that used to be a requirement on al l boats.
The paddle was screwed to the wall above the head next to the fire extinguishers and first aid kit.
He decided that since the tide was going out, he would be able to hop out of the boat and walk to the nearest road or house and call for a tow. Despite my telling him that won't work, he tried anyhow. When he jumped into the water which looked to be about 2 ft deep he sunk up to his armpits in black mud. I made him go around to the rear of the boat and use the out drives to pull himself back into the boat.
At that point I was tired of sitting there so I told him as soon as the tied turned and started coming back in, to start grabbing the anchor rope by hand and toss it upstream and keep doing that till we get back to a dock somewhere. It was lesson time as far as I was concerned. By around 9pm we got back to a dock we passed about a mile up stream with a combination of tossing the anchor and pulling the boat forward and me holding the boat with a stake we pulled up that used to be a marker post. That marina had a pay phone on the dock where I had him call a buddy to bring out some fuel. An hour later, we had four 6 gallon jugs of fuel.I got it fired up and then ran back to the dock where the trailer was.
It was near midnight by that time. On the way home, I made him fill both tanks. It took 191 gallons in two 100 gallon tanks, of premium fuel no less.
When I turned the key on after the fill up, both gauges read dead empty. They were working in reverse.
I took that paddle off the wall that day and kept it. When we got back to the truck he starte dto say something about me taking it, but stopped having thought better of it.I had it t next to my phone for years to remind me to be buy the next time he called.