The steel exhaust pipe between the engine's exhaust and the waterlift muffler decided to spring a leak. The first thing I noticed was a deceleration in the engine Rpm's, the next thing was a hissing sound and then smoke coming out the companionway.
I immediately shut down the engine and opened the engine compartment to investigate. There was water everywhere. Knowing the smoke was not something that was on fire, I started the engine to see what was leaking.
The steel pipe was cracked where it threaded into an elbow. The pipe size was 2 inches in diameter. I had nothing to replace it with nor anything large enough to wrap around it, so I thought.
I always keep spare hose clamps in all diameters for this kind of emergency but the clamp by itself wouldn't work and the spare rubber hose would surely burn up.
OK hot boating tip of the month guy, what do you do now?
I searched all over the boat including my spare parts box for something that would wrap around the pipe.
Then it hit me an aluminum can would fit perfectly. I cut the bottom and top off of two aluminum cans, then I cut both cans down the center and wrapped them in opposite direction around the pipe and secured with hose clamps at both ends. This procedure got me back to my mooring with little leakage.
The moral of this story for me is, don't think of hot boating tips while out boating.