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Panic.
The only word for it. In truth it was not sudden in its onset. We had
met up for the first trip of the season nice and early on the Saturday
morning with the plan being for three of us, Olly Paine, Mike Jones and
myself, to get some practice in before the remainder of the crew joined
us for opening Frostbite series race the following day.
The previous season had been curtailed early when, just one week before
the Finn Trophy, I had discovered that Feeling Rough’s keelbolts
were weeping. Although it actually only took a couple of months to get
sorted, the stress of that period had been enough to almost put me off
boat ownership. It turned out that a collision with a submerged railway
bogey (of all things) back in early May had damaged the bond between
the keel and the hull. Even with my experience as a claims adjuster on
a couple of Lloyds Yacht BAs, the wait for insurers and repairers to
sort things out was bordering on the intolerable.
Here we were, at the start of a new year with the boat up and running
and plenty of willing crew for the RSYC Frostbite Series. We were in
Towsure, looking for fuel for the cooker when Mike first mentioned a
squelch he’d felt when stowing kit in the forepeak. I can’t
be sure it registered too much then. I probably said I’d check it
out when we got back. Nothing more. But then when we did get back and
drained the bilge around the previously troublesome forward keelbolt,
the water returned fairly quickly and that is when the panic set in.
Had the repair not been done properly? Had it been done at all? How
would the insurers react and would it be necessary to sue the repairer
with whom I had got on so well?
In truth, none of us were convinced that it was the keelbolt that was
leaking. The carpet around the fringe of the bilge was saturated and
there are plenty of fittings in the area, the heads, the sink, the
forehatch. Any of them could be leaking but it could be the keel and
there was no way I was taking anyone racing if I couldn’t rely on
that. In my experience, only booms kill more yachtsmen than keels
coming off racing boats and I wasn’t going to take any chances. I
was grateful to the crew, who’s weekend had essentially been
wasted, that they were in agreement.
There are a gazillion sailing publications out there. Some on the joys,
some on the challenges and plenty on how to run a boat, but with the
best will in the world, you can’t read them all, especially if
you keep your boat afloat in the winter as I do. I am not a terribly
practical chap. Everything I know about looking after boats, I’ve
had to go and pick up since buying my first a couple of years ago, and
thus I had no idea about diagnostics. An afternoon drowning my sorrows
in a Hampshire pub, and an interrupted night’s sleep thinking
about it, however, did convince me that I should find out before going
any further off the handle.
I returned to the boat alone the next day. Having drained and cleaned
the bilge the previous day, I found that a significant amount of water
had returned. Somehow though, it did not taste as brackish as the day
before. Optimism, if not blind hope, probably accounted for this but
either way, it was enough to keep me going. It wasn’t
sophisticated, but I again drained the bilge and surrounded the keel
boat with that staple of every yacht, blueroll. It was not tightly
sealed against the GRP but it did appear that it got damp on the
outside first. Was the water coming down rather than up?
Clearly I was going to have to find out but toying with ideas of how to
isolate the fitting gave me plenty of ideas but none that I knew would
work. A damn of plastercine was one person’s suggestion, bathroom
sealant silicon was another. I’m indebted to the contributors to
the Practical Boat Owner Website forum (www.ybw.com)
who during the course of the following week agreed that my best bet was
to dry the area thoroughly and then pour talcum powder liberally about.
You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to find talc in a supermarket
these days, but it was worth the conquest. It worked! Better still, I
now knew that the water was coming down, not up.
The seacocks around the heads are dry and the leak has been traced to a
perished seal around the forehatch. Why was the water brackish? Well
having three or four times used sea water to remove the frost from the
boat, much of what had come in was briney and lets face it, that carpet
has been in the boat for 25 years and must have picked up a fair bit of
salt in that time (fair play to the manufacturers that it has not
rotted in the slightest).
So weekend one of the series was no great success, but at the same time
I knew that it could be a lot worse and I had learned a valuable lesson
in that a skipper/owner needs to know how to diagnose a problem. In the
circumstances, not sailing was the right decision, but had I had the
skills to diagnose the problem straight away, I need not have lost that
weekend, not only for myself but the crew.
The second Sunday of the series, two weeks after the first, looked like
being heavy weather, so I made a point of restricting it to experienced
crew. Sadly the weather forecast never abated and the plan went from
‘experienced crew only’ to ‘experienced crew with
white sails only (lets get ‘round without breaking
anything/anyone’) and eventually ended up at ‘we
don’t need to do this, lets stay in bed’.
Four races into the series and we’re yet to leave the marina. I
fairness, we’re one of five boats in just that position,
including LLYC’s own Lutine Belle. The purpose of this series was
never to go pot hunting but to learn, learn about myself as a skipper,
to get some crew up to speed and to learn more and more about the boat.
Perhaps it’s been something of a false start, but that’s
winter sailing for you. It’s all borrowed time afloat. At the
time of writing, the forecast for Sunday makes even getting to the
marina look treacherous, but we shall see at the end of the week.
It’s only the 3rd of February and so much has happened in just a
month of 2009 that you can’t help but think there is so, so much
more to come.
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