THE SHORT STOREY
CASSIOPEIA
The moment is soooooooo close. With some outstanding help, the careening worked! SHE IS NOT LEAKING! She is protected from further worm damage! A massive stress reduction for her captain. Now just paint the decks and WOW water issues solved! That is hopefully to be done before I go to Texas next week. The engine is running nicely and the alternator charging well. The decks are nearly clear and I actually had friends over for dinner! See below about finding twelve year old treasure in the bilge!
PROJECT
The books are way in the red! Antifouling plus epoxy was costly! Thus I present another plea for anyone who can to please send on their pledge. The accounts are attached. I hope to pay the bill and buy deck paint this Tuesday. I have attached the western union and bank details again. Now that Cassi is stable I am going to work hard on the project marketing over the next weeks to reach the final goal. I am hoping to raise the funds for Cassi’s big haul out so it can be scheduled for October or November.
BOOK
I must admit this last week was overwhelmed with Cassiopeia. I did create a presentation to a famous yachtsman and author requesting advice on the project and publishing options. I had a lovely discussion about the book with some local pledger/friends who gave me great input on how far to take the real and raunchy. After hearing an example or two they voted, “All the way!” saying “You can always tame it down later.”
I am really looking forward to the next couple of months because now that Cassiopeia is floating comfortably I can switch from her to the book in a big way. I love the weaving of the tales especially now that I get to be raunchy.
THE CAREENING STORY, IT WAS ALL IT PROMISED TO BE!
Exhausted, physically and emotionally, that was yet another one of a kind experience I shared with my lovely boat. It was quite the weekend! Stressful, hard, exciting, challenging, but it worked! Yeah! A successful careening.
I admit succumbing to the stress just thinking about doing it, and then it was happening and there was no turning back. My friend Ben and his son Josh arrived the night before and first thing in the morning we used his boat with a 150 horse outboard to push her onto the beach. We ran out an anchor attached to a halyard and pulled her mast over to the seaward side and tied her stern to a tree on shore. Torque, the owner of the beach, was there with his jet boat along with some yachty friends who had been to a careening before and some local friends Michael and Dennis.
It all seemed rather controlled in the beginning but it definitely got more exciting as the day went on. The grounding was straightforward but there is no denying that feeling her hit and knowing I did it on purpose was weird. I dropped the anchor in inches of water and then tied her stern to the tree. We then set another anchor out to sea and connected it to a halyard which we used to pull the top of her mast over so she leaned the right way.
We were sanding as she leaned over further and further exposing more bottom. What I did not visualise was how far she was going to heel. Her rail was under water and since the back of her keel did not wind up in the sand her stern was sinking. I scrambled aboard to hear water rushing in from the stern. It was pouring in from the topsides corner seam of the transom. I screamed to Ben and he climbed up to help frantically re-plump the gasoline powered pump from the bilge to reach where the water was collecting.
We were rushing which was difficult due to the excessive heel. Walking on the walls inside and clambering on the deck that was near impossible to scale, was gymnastic to say the least. Using any little edge for a toehold we finally got the pump propped up at the right angle and the intake pipe to where the water was the deepest. That was not in the bilge as she was so far over it was collecting halfway up her topsides. The pump magically started and began happily staying ahead of the leak.
I then dingied to shore to pick some more helping hands and when I looked back at Cassi from the dock my heart jumped in to my throat and I started hollering “HURRY, I think a window has gone under!” I raced back and luckily it had not yet actually happened, but her window in the transom was only a couple of inches above the waterline. If it went under I did not think the pump could keep up. This created another mad scramble to rig up a drill and get out the no more gaps and a caulk gun to screw plywood over the window.
I have kept two pre-cut pieces of plywood under the aft cabin bunk from the first time I ever took her sailing as those windows seemed so vulnerable. They are not proper portholes and do not seal in any way. Yet in all these years, despite often being close to the sea, they have never taken on water and my emergency plan was never needed. Now it was!
Meanwhile the volunteers standing in the sand were steadily sanding and filling worm holes and chiselling out bad spots and brushing on antifouling paint. The generator was on deck propped at a crazy angle and we were using heat guns to dry the bad spots. Oddly it all seemed under control and we epoxied and bogged and painted starting at the lowest spots and as the tide came in we slowly moved up. Finally using some tape, we marked off the waterline and put on the last layer of paint.
Then there was only to wait and hope she floated off. Which she did nicely! Ben helped me reset the anchor that had been tied to the mast as a stern anchor and I picked up the bow anchor and drug it to a spot where I could use the anchor windlass to pull her up on the beach the next morning. Carrying a fifty kilo anchor dragging the bow around of a thirty ton boat was making me giggle as it seemed so silly but it worked!
Aside from the near sinking it had gone well although there was one other bit of bad/good luck. The generator had seemed to bog down at one point, so I clambered up on deck once again to check it out. I noticed right away what the problem was and cussed myself as the jib sail which was lying on deck had tumbled down and covered the exhaust of the generator. It was charred and indeed slightly on fire as I pulled it away. Major bummer. I had to use a knife to clear the exhaust as sail cloth had melted into the opening! Bad luck to ruin a sail but good luck that I saw it before was truly burning and had set the deck on fire!
That night she was not leaking much and despite my worries about the next day I slept a hard tired sleep. Waking early it was just me and I eased her stern anchor and slowly winched her up onto the beach. Torque arrived and tied the line for pulling her mast over to a tree ashore. This time I angled her a bit more to the beach so her keel hit evenly hoping to prevent the stern sinking issue and allow more of her bottom to be exposed. That worked, but later I was to regret it.
This time she did not seem to want to lean over. She was standing there upright for ages and then suddenly wooooaahhhhhh she heeled and heeled and heeled some more. I madly rushed around on deck abseiling from lines I had tied on the high side to keep the generator upright and rearrange as everything shifted. On this day I had a skeleton crew of just Torque, Michael, and Dennis. I knew it was going to be a push for us to get done.
Then the generator would not start. Ain’t it always the way? I spent half an hour mucking with the carburettor and got some spits and starts but finally gave up which meant no heat guns for that day. We rationalised it was OK as they had only moderately dried things the day before. Once again filling and bogging and painting and chiselling it all was going well and the tide began coming in.
I went below for a check and was shocked and horrified to find the tide was coming up on the inside! I could here the water pouring in from up forward. It was much, much worse than the day before! My “better” positioning put more pressure on her hull against the sand which opened up a seam that created a meter long gap and it was letting in a lot of water. I screamed and this time Torque helped as we once again tried to plumb the pump to the deepest part, which this time was in the galley. This was even more frantic than the day before as it was really coming in fast. The waterline on the inside was almost matching the waterline on the outside as the tide rose.
Like the generator which had worked perfectly the day before, this time we could not get the pump to prime despite it having worked perfectly the day before. We struggled and struggled, falling and slipping, and finally Torque said, ”I think I better go get this big pump I have for my garden.” He disappeared and I kept fighting to get the one that had worked so nicely to do its job. Things were starting to get serious. The water was collecting way up on the hull and it was getting deep. She was heeled so far the galley drawers and cabinets were under. I looked back aft and could see it was getting deep back there as well.
I had that oddest of feelings that comes when a situation seems close to hopeless. It is a weird sensation that forces you to disallow the picture of how bad it is, because it is not the end yet and so you simply focus on trying and trying and trying.
Then there was Torque handing me the intake hose of his pump and I jammed it into the deepest spot and it began gushing the water back to where it belonged. I squeezed under the port bunk where I could hear the water rushing in and could see the huge gap in her hull. Grabbing some seaming cotton I jumped overboard and by laying in the sand with my nose just above the water I could reach under the hull and began stuffing cotton in the gap. As she came up I put on dive gear and hammered in more cotton. The pump was keeping up and the cotton was slowing the leak and so we went back to work on the exposed side. Whew!
So she floated again but this time she was still leaking pretty bad through the gap so I set my alarm for every two hours and woke up all that night to make sure I did not need the big pump again. Luckily her ordinary electric pump kept up. I scootered into town the next morning for a tank fill and then was able to pound in more cotton and use up the last of the underwater epoxy. Arrrgghhh it only barely slowed it down, so I repeated the same program the next day including dingying to all the other yachts to collect a little more underwater epoxy!
But now it is YEAH FOR US time!
After a few more dives the leak is gone and she is sitting quietly with antifouling protecting her from further worm damage. Although I do not think I will do it to her again, the careening project is now considered a success!
When I squeezed back under the bunk to check the leak after the first try with the cotton I actually was forced to laugh, despite the urgent situation, as there in the beam of my flashlight, jammed in a long unseen corner of the bilge, was a huge jar of mustard, and a bottle of Gin! I instantly realised they must have been there ever since the “great provisioning” done in Panama before we headed out across the Pacific. We had bought so much stuff at Cost-U-Less that it seemed impossible we could get it all aboard. But we did, by stuffing things in any available spot. For twelve years that bottle of gin had alluded detection. Arrgggh a treasure recovered for sure!
I must admit it led to a swaggering evening just before I stopped the leak. I was totally exhausted after the hard weekend and then two sleepless nights and getting a bit frustrated after another long day of diving and she was still leaking. After I ran out of tonic to mix with the gin I began making martinis and wound up having a bit of chat with Cassiopeia. I hollered and told her she better straighten up and give me a break soon. I swore at her to quit leaking and act right. Then I patted her on the mast and told her I still loved her and fell into a much needed deep sleep.
I think she took it on as the next day the leak stopped (with a little of my help) and I was able to focus on cleaning up the mess the careening had created. Once again I rinsed heaps of things that had gotten seawater wet and had to re-stow nearly everything in the boat. Finally a week later she is very close to that over the hump point I mentioned in my last report. Short of a coat of paint on the deck, she is now a stable patient, prepared to hang in there until the “Big Haulout” can be organised. I reckon she could be well enough for some short sailing adventures once I get her sails on.
YEAH YEAH YEAH!!!!! YEAH FOR US!!!!!!!!
I can not tell you how much better it feels to not hear the bilge pump coming on constantly and to know that those horrible little creatures will no longer be munching on her hull!
THANKS THANKS THANKS!!!!!
I can not thank you pledgers enough for making this possible. Without your pledges this could have never happened. Her demise has been thwarted.
I also must thank Torque and Ben and Lane and Kay and Michael and Dennis and Patricia and the random guy in the canoe who held a heat gun for hours.
Another page turned and another step forward taken. I will continue to make this work and reach the goals set forth! Every worthy endeavour in life will be hard, yet it will also be easy because those very trials are the things that keep you switched on. Without something to push against you just fall over.
So for those of you that read all of that here is a little poem……..
Dolphins
by Harold Neel
peripheral, a slice
away and ahead
a slick ripple
sit up
a hump
a fin
at the bow
breath with joy
yours, theirs
more then
leaps
rolls
eyes
excited, a cry
crew to the bow
you, them
laughs squeaks
respect
love
wet
planet
YEAH FOR US !!! H
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| Her gearbox was iffy so we pushed her in |
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| Marking the spot to hit |
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| Oh my ! We are AGROUND! |
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| The View form the Beach |
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| A real live Careening underway |
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| Drying out the seams |
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| Slowly going over |
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| That window got closer! I screwed the plywood on the inside |
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| Her rail going under |
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| Bogging the holes |
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| Carrying a fifty kilo anchor pulling around the bow of a thirty ton boat Sometimes Schoonering is hard work! |
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| It worked now ready for the next day! |
