Log March 2010 Almost sunk! 

Trying to get the Catamaran hauled is a real pain n the butt. Being 27' wide it can't be hauled on the mainland unless we go a couple of hundred miles down the coast.

There is a local "Dry Dock" in Oak Ridge that is 29' wide but they wanted $1000/ day to haul us. Luvin managed to get us a deal at $1400 total for 2  weks. Ed couldn't turn down the deal. So all of a sudden we were organizing to het hauled.  We spent time running around organizing bottom paint, and Ed wanted to change the shaft which is bent, on the starboard engine.

We went down the island (the Rodeo) to get supplies for the haulout. Took all the canvas and cushions off the exterior of the cat. Then we drove over on our one remaining engine, with Ikeman and Alex in the Sea Calf and Cebert in the Panga. They hauled the cat out on the drydock in Oakridge .

Now that we were up in the air Ikeman and Alex (local kids) were busy sanding the bottom. Luven was coming today to pull the starboard shaft and replace it. Ed  fitted thru hulls for depth sounders and I cooked for everyone and tryed to stay sane. It was hot as hell.

We left Ikeman and Alex sanding the port hull, and went down island.

While we were away, Donnie, the owner of the drydock (and a mechanic) had cleaned up our prop & shaft and told us the shaft is not bent, the problem is the alignment with the engine. 

The boys painted the bottom, we cleaned the props and painted the shafts etc. Ed patched the hole in the hull with West Epoxy and felt it was stronger than ever... 

Launch Day 

We were patting ourselves on the back because this was such an easy haulout – we had Ikeman and Alex as our worker bees and they did most of the dirty hard work. The bottom was all painted and everything looked good.

Ed had done a patch at the aft end of the port keel, where it had crunched in when they hauled us. On the drydock, what happens is you drive the boat into the ‘slip’ and then they empty the water out of the barge and you come down onto the barge’s platform. The barge consists of 4 steel air chambers, which they inflate or deflate as the case may be.

When they originally placed us down onto the barge’s platform, they deflated the 4 chambers unevenly, which made us come down hard on the aft end of the port keel. Because all the weight of the boat was on this one point, it drove the keel up into the boat itself a little, and made a crack at that joint where the keel joins the boat.

Boats, being fiberglass are pretty easy to repair. Ed drew attention to the problem to Ronnie (the guy who owns the drydock barge) and said we would fix it, but just remember when hauling yachts (especially catamarans) it is different than hauling your average steel shrimp boat. Ronnie is a nice guy, but he really doesn’t understand the fragility of these eggshell-thin Styrofoam coolers they call French Catamarans.

Anyway, Ed ground the problem area, and laid up 7 or 8 layers of fiberglass. We proceeded to sand and paint the bottom (well, Ikeman and Alex did most of it), and put in two depth sounder transducers with 5200 sealant. 

We floated out of the dry dock that morning, so glad to be able to go ‘home’ and not have to pee into a pail anymore. When we got floated, we checked the transducers, all dry below. We also checked the stb engine, where we had had the shaft de-coupled from the engine to check if it was bent (it wasn’t). All dry in the engine compartment. All dry below. 

The problem happened when we got through the cut from Oakridge into the sea. It was blowing pretty hard from the east and there were good sized swells. I was running around changing positions of fenders and lines on the deck, and checking down below for possible leaks. On one of my checks, I discovered ‘big water’ down below on the port side. I came up to tell the captain. When I say ‘big water’ to the captain, he knows from experience this means ‘we are in deep shit’.  

So I take the wheel and the captain goes below to verify the bad news. We say "oh shit". Then we turn around right away and get off the sea, and back to harbor. As we are milling around in beautiful downtown Oakridge Bight, I have the floorboards up and am madly bailing with a large bucket, into the bathroom sink. Just me and the bilge pump, I could not keep up with it. Luckily our crew (Ikeman and Alex), who we had sent ahead in the Sea Calf to Calabash Bight returned to find out where we had gone.  They had found Cebert, and he came out in the panga. Also, Ed had called Luven, who arrived in his skiff. Everyone jumped aboard and helped bail. We drove around the Bight for awhile, bailing and wondering what to do.  

We finally tied up next to the barge, and they brought out a kick-ass huge gasoline pump. We took the 5” hose below and stuck it in the bilge, and that was the end of the bucket bailing. Thank God.

But we were still sinking, and still in 12 feet of water. Ronnie, the barge owner was preparing the barge for us to go back into it. It takes 1 ½  hours for the barge to re-fill so that we could go back into it. So we let the gasoline pump do its job and sent the kids to buy a whole bunch of baleadas for lunch. (I didn’t feel like cooking seeing as I was covered in salt water, my hair was a mess, I stunk, and there were no floorboards in the galley).

Donnie got the drydock ready. But since the crew was away getting baleadas, it was me and the captain. Oh, I probably forgot to mention, we only had one engine working, the stb engine having quit working during our Guanaja excursion the week before. The wind was still blowing pretty good, even in the Bight.  With the gasoline pump still blasting away, we took off and tried to turn this manure spreader around and bring it nose-first into the drydock. No such luck chuck. The wind took us and we were embarrassed into throwing lines to available hands and stuck to the side of the barge until they pulled us away from the lee shore and then we took off again, spun around and made a perfect landing inside the comparative safety of the drydock.

 After all this, the damn crew arrived with the f’cking baleadas. So we all had lunch and thought about life while the barge emptied out. This time the captain told Ronnie to just let the boat settle on its own keels nice and level, on the flat steel bed of the barge. After all, that is how the boat is designed to do.

 We settled onto the bottom, and the bilge finally emptied of water. So here we are back in the dirt and the filth of Oakridge, peeing in a pail…….but we survived almost being shipwrecked, seriously, and mom and pop cruiser triumph over adversity again!!!! Aaaaaarrrrrrgggggghhhhhh!!!!!!!!

We be sailors.

 Back on the hard.

Ed ground the crack in the keel and preparing to glass it over. Luven showed up after the grinding – Ed subcontracted it out to him, we gave him 100 for materials and he fixed it. We re-launched, and floated this time. However, we are not satisfied with this fix. The plan is to remove the port fuel tank, under the galley floor. This way we can get at the problem area from the inside of the boat, and glass it in from the inside as well as the outside..

A nice project for the near future!