Gold and brown smoke through exhaust is what?

[Bill W]

Title says it all, when deep water starting on slalom ski, after a couple of start/stops the skier yells at us to look at the swim platform. Sure enough, gold-ish-brown smoke billowing out of both exhausts and boat RPM shuttered, dropped and stalled.

After turning off the boat completely and checking the engine compartment for any signs, noises, etc of problems (e.g. a fire of any sort) we found nothing. We tried to start the engine again... and after about four seperate cranks to get it started, it took. Pulled the prop out of gear and revved the engine up a bit. This "seemed" to blow the remaining smoke out because the engine kept running and no more smoke, RPMS are fine, everthing sounds fine again... No smoke near engine, all comingout of the exhaust, best we could tell, both of them.

We idle back to the dock, put the boat on the lift, check all fluids, oils, etc, everything looked good with plenty of clean fluids, etc in all the right places none that we noted in places it should be (fluids). Check the water intake grate for debris, it was clean.

We then take the boat back out with just two of us onboard. Ran it slow = nothing, ran it fast = nothing, did about 4 or 5 start / stops = nothing. We could not replicate the smoke or produce any smoke of any kind. We did some tubing and general cruising Sunday with no additional issues, boat SEEMS to be fine again.

So I'm looking for collective knowledge on this one... anybody have thoughts to share or any insight in what in the heck happened?!?

Our best guess is that a clump of seaweed or something blocked the engine's water intake grate and the blue run-dry impeller (by Globe), well, ran dry and did it's job (we hope)... other than that we are stumped.

I'd love to have an idea of how NOT to do this again in the future.

Thanks.

[Sunsetter95]

Brownish color in a car is carbon blowing out of the exhaust and cylinders when under accelaration... maybe some water got up the risers from the stop and go, caused the carbon to fall off due to steam in the exhaust manifolds, the change in temp due to the steam threw off the sensors for the ignition and it stalled... it could happen...

Or may be the pump got clogged, it over heated a bit, blew out the carbon, and the ignition quit because of the over heat. Check the over temp sensor so it sounds the alarm....