Out-News = Volvo IPS Failure

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 the last is that it was safer then anything due to a water tight system in case the unexpected happened. These pictures shown on the www.thailandboating.com above show an IPS pod set up failure which nearly sank a fairly new Sunseeker 47 Portofino with only ten hours on its engine clocks in December 2008. This failure accured 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 sinking. Still the consequences are that all the electronics and gen set will need changing, and the engines thanks to some lucky and fast yard repairs can be rebuilt.