I am now on day four of my cool down after last Saturday nights adventure. I say cool down because if I'd written about this any earlier I would have ousted the owner, by name & boat name, and torn him an even bigger a-hole than he already has..
The sun had just recently dipped below the horizon, over an idyllic picture perfect Maine post card evening, the seals were barking, it was quiet, peaceful & serene. As I am sipping a glass of fine wine, while checking tomorrows weather on my iPad, in the cockpit I glance over to catch the last few nits of daylight, on what is close to the longest day of the year, yet something was odd.. I did not quite recognize what it was but a few minutes later I glance over again and this time it hits me like Mike Tyson chewing on my ear... I look at my wife and simply say; "I gotta go, that boat is sinking."
After Saturday nights debacle I realized I had actually I captured her bow about 15-20 minutes before the five gallon bucket brigade began. Unfortunately in the excitement my phone was on our boat during the height of it so this is the only photo I have of her sinking. She dipped to about half way up the tops sides and this is nowhere near as low as she got..
This is what she looked like the next morning for some perspective, and even here she had been slowly leaking all night..
That's a LOT of freaking water!!
I suppose every area has one, you know, the Mr.Magoo of boating, who does less than zero maintenance, sails a debacle of a boat that is 150% UNSAFE AT ANY SPEED, (my apologies to Mr. Nader) and who has no qualms posting ads for naive crew wishing to get on a sailboat & learn to race.
Let this event sink in and then PLEASE think twice about the boats yous set foot on. After spending nearly four hours on this boat on Saturday night, I can honestly say I would not feel safe setting foot on her again, even on the hard. I mean no ill will to the owner but I hope the insurance company totals her to at least take him off the water for a while. I only hope for this to slow the eventual death or injury to one of his crew due to his insanely unsafe boating practices...
"I gotta go that boat is sinking." are the last words I said to my wife before literally launching myself into the dinghy and blasting over, well as fast at 2.5 horses can blast, to a 45' derelict racing sailboat that was now bow down to about half way up the topsides.
Seconds before I got there apparently two guys from the marina got there too. I had mistaken them for crew of the sinking boat, but they were just bystanders who noticed it at about the same time I did. They were both about half way down the companion way, in pitch black, with water nearly mid thigh deep.
"Do you have a bucket?" one asked me. "No" I answered. "Have you turned on the bilge pumps?" I asked. "We can't find them?" they answered. "WTF" I am now thinking, these guys sailed here on this boat and don't even know where the bilge switches are? They had not, but I did not know this at the time. At this point one of the guys has grabbed a bucket from the marina launch and bailing began immediately.
I began the frantic search for the manual bilge pumps handle. You know the handle that should ALWAYS be within inches of the manual bilge pump?? Not..... I frantically searched every nook and cranny in the cockpit to no avail. Nothing in the lazarettes but piles of rotted running rigging, filth and grime and no sign of anything related to safety or good safe boating. At this point I realize I need to go grab my own manual bilge pump handle and some head lamps. I yelled to the two guys bailing that I would be right back and the last thing I said was;
"Try to find the leak, she's sinking lower, we're not keeping up."
I buzzed back over to our boat where I yelled to my wife from about ten feet away;
"Can you reach into the winch holder on the pedestal and pass me the bilge pump handle and grab me the three headlamps in the saloon table as well as the hand held VHF?"
Within about 10 seconds I had everything I needed, just as it should be, in an emergency.
When I got back to the sinking boat I tried to insert the bilge pump handle, but it was a no-go. The boat apparently uses a different handle than the rest of the world. D'oh.. I won't even go into the sheer stupidity of a non-industry standardized emergency bilge pump handle, when it comes to safety.. After realizing my own bilge pump handle would not fit, I hailed on CH 9, the working channel of the anchorage we were in, for a bilge pump handle to help save the sinking boat.
With head lamps, and more people showing up to help, we now had multiple 5 gallon buckets and a chain of guys from the saloon all the way up the companionway to the deck. We were daisy chaining 5 gallon buckets overboard at about a 3-5 second interval. There is something very eerie about knowingly being inside a derelict, ill-maintained boat, that is mid thigh deep, and not knowing why it is sinking. A very scary feeling for sure..
At about that point I heard one of the marina guys below say he found the leak! In the pitch black, he was able to locate the leak by feeling cold water pouring into the boat near the stuffing box. A true marine professional! He was then able to slide the hose back onto the fiberglass shaft log and slow down the leak.
After the VHF call we received half a dozen handles but only one of them fit. Immediately a guy I know who came over to help, I'll call him Johnny, but that's not his real name. Johnny went to work pumping the bilge manually from the cockpit. He was frantically pumping away, like a teenage boy with a Farrah Faucett poster, but the flow was meager at best. He said that initially the pump felt like it was doing something, for perhaps the first 20 pumps, then it quickly faded to something akin the pee-stream of a chipmunk. You guessed it, a dead pump diaphragm due to LACK OF MAINTENANCE.
While reading this please keep in-mind that this vessel is a very active race boat that routinely has novice crew and even does such offshore races as Marblehead to Halifax. Scary stuff! How this boat ever passed a legit race inspection for offshore racing is a FU¢K!ING STAIN on the racing community.
Back to the buckets... Ok no problem we now have headlamps & multiple buckets let's find those bilge pump switches and get them turned on. "Ok they're on." a guy yells. "Anything out the stern?" I ask over the commotion. The response, "NOTHING!" As I bend over to check the port side I am instantly doused by a five gallon bucket of stinky, diesely bilge water, "Ugh"... Ok check starboard side, "NOTHING!".. WTF, no working bilge pumps? Well the batteries are submerged so not such a big surprise...
At this point the guys are bailing to beat the band so I dive below to get a screw driver to re-attach the stuffing box hose and slow the leak further. After no less than 5 minutes of searching there is not a tool or screw driver to be found that can tighten a simple hose clamp on this 45 foot vessel. Perhaps they were there, but tools not easily accessible, is just as good as no tools at all. So, back into the dinghy I go. "Cara", I say from the dinghy as I approach, "Please open the top drawer in the nav station and pass me one of the orange handle screw drivers.". Within 5 seconds I have a screw driver in-hand and am heading back towards the boat.
Back on the boat I make my way down the companionway, while ducking the bucket brigade, to attempt to tighten the stuffing box. As I reach in there I can still feel the cold water flowing in. The water is still up to my shoulder, while accessing the stuffing box, and I can't really see the stuffing box yet but I can freely rotate & wiggle both hose clamps around the stuffing box hose. "Are you freaking kidding me?" I mutter. I have now been attempting to tighten the clamps for about three or four minutes but every time I think I have the "nut driver" on the clamp bolt it rotates away from me. As boats go a job that's easy with two hands is impossible with one handed access... "Ricky" I yell to another guy I know, and no it's not his real name, "Can you get any access to the stuffing box from starboard?", "I am shining my head lamp on it now." I say.
Within a few seconds I see Ricky's hand but Ricky can't see the stuffing box, he can only feel it.
Ricky's hand on our second tightening attempt, after the water had subsided a bit:
"Holy $hit this thing just rotates!" he say's... "I know!"..
I reach down and rotate the clamp to where I think I need it oriented, which is tough to do in shoulder deep water that is occluded with bilge grime, oil sheen, floating Rotella quarts and anti-freeze gallons bumping off my thighs.
I rotated the clamp and manually guided Ricky's thumb to it and said; "Press hard." Ricky presses and I begin to make a few turns, then a few more, then more and more and more. I am beginning to think this clamp was never tight at all...??? We managed to get the clamp somewhat snug then moved to the other one. The second clamp takes nearly 15 turns before it even starts to "grab" or compress the hose. Once again I am left thinking WTF...???
Finally, after destroying my arms & hands on sharp items in the access area to the packing gland, read minimal to no access, I can no longer feel a rush of cold water but it's definitely still leaking some. Ricky & I need to wait until the water level drops to below the stuffing box to really know for sure, but we are still a long way from that. Keep bailing...!!
The bucket brigade guys are doing yeoman's work, and we now have enough guys to rotate as they tire out. The water level is dropping slowly but steadily and this is good news. Hell it's a 45 foot high volume boat so it might as well be an Olympic sized swimming pool to the guys bailing BY HAND with 5 gallon buckets..
By now the water level has dropped enough so that we can actually see through the murky water that there's another manual bilge pump in the bilge? (photo taken after I grabbed my phone) It's an odd manual set up for sure with only enough outlet hose to reach the galley sink.
We fed the hose to the sink and began pumping... NADA... Dead diaphragm in pump #2 as well. So far on the manual bilge pumps we are 0 for 2.. Did I mention that this boat is poorly-maintained.... (grin)
"But wait there more if you act now you'll get not one, but two....." Look really closely at this picture. What do you see? Do you see the screws all backed out of the pumps housing? Me too?
The owner or person in-charge of maintenance KNEW THIS PUMP DID NOT WORK AND FAILED TO FIX IT! We only know this fact because they were also too damn lazy to finish threading the screws all the way back into the pump housing...
I wish someone could tell me how to work a pump like this, in waist deep water, when the galley drain is at the same level as the water outside the boat??? Apparently 20' of low budget corrugated hose & a new diaphragm is too much to spend on the safety for your naive crew eh..... Physics 101 here folks..
After this event I am honestly starting to think we need MORE CASES like the Cheeki Rafiki where the owner is held accountable & liable for repairs or lack there of that result death or injury. I now further believe this liability should also extend to the race communities that continue to allow these sorts of boats & owners to participate INCLUDING MY OWN CLUB! There is NO EXCUSE for this level of disrespect for your crews life. NONE!!
I hate to be a Ron Popeil but "Wait, there's more."
The water level finally gets down to the point where we could see this:
Abandoned bilge pump strainer basket
What do you suppose that is? I knew instantly that it was a strainer basket for a Rule BILGE PUMP. Yes, the pump was gone, apparently had failed, wires were cut and left to dangle in bilge water and the pump was never replaced!!!
No, I am NOT kidding, you really can't make this $hit up.
This is why the bilge switches did not work.
"But wait, there's more..........."
Lest you think ripping out one bilge pump, and failing to replace it, is bad, how about ripping out TWO bilge pumps and failing to replace them........?????????? I suspect even Bubbles from Trailer Park Boys would own a better maintained boat than this. Here kitty......
The second abandoned bilge pump strainer basket....
Shake your head and laugh all you want but I am not kidding about this at all. At one point in time this vessel had no less than four working bilge pumps two manual pumps and two centrifugal Rule type bilge pumps. It now has ZERO, unless you count a small diaphragm pump with a 100% clogged intake screen.....
As the water level dropped a bit more we could hear a faint noise and realized that it was a small diaphragm pump under the galley sink. It appeared to be, what many moons ago may have been a gray water sump for an icebox? Of course the sump it was sucking out of now had a hole that allowed it to drain direct into the bilge for which there were no working bilge pumps....
In our flipping of switches it must have been turned on? Interestingly enough, or not, considering the batteries and much of the electrical system were UNDER WATER, it was the only thing that actually worked on the DC bus and it was far to small to do much more than empty an ice box of melted ice.....
Oh and how can I forget the batteries....
A fully submerged battery!
Please, please, please THE BILGE IS NO PLACE FOR BATTERIES! This battery is BELOW the cabin sole boards on a very shallow bilge boat. DUMB, DUMB, DUMB. This practice alone should disqualify any boat from off-shore racing, but I digress.
In this debacle even the house bank which sits higher, under the aft cabin berth, got submerged. Sorry for the bad pic this is just how the night went.
If you question the speed of DC corrosion please understand that these terminals went from silver to eaten/eroded almost no time at all. The bubbles around the negative terminal are DC corrosion physically eating away at the battery terminals.
I will say it again, BATTERIES SHOULD NOT BE IN THE BILGE!!!
Despite the AGM batteries getting submerged the little belt driven Par-Max pump was still very slowly ticking over. It was not however moving any water. Why? The strum screen was totally clogged due to the bilge being as dirty as a Central American Dump. One guy tried to remove the strum screen but the hose clamp would not come off so he resorted to a knife to cut the pumps intake hose. Water finally started coming out of the stern, all be it very, very slowly.
One of the marina guys actually went and grabbed a 12V group 27 battery and a small bait well pump to get all the pumping power we could. He jury rigged it in the boats forward sail locker and aimed the hose out the hatch, it worked pretty well but compared to the volume of water it really amounted to a Chipmunks pee stream GPM wise.. This would have been much easier if the owner actually cared enough about human life to actually maintain a single working bilge pump on-board, but again I digress....
One of the guys who knows the owner realizes the owners phone number is in his phone back on his boat so we jump back into the dinghy and go grab it. I also grab my phone on the way back so I can snap a few shots of the mayhem seen above. I am sorry I did not get any shots at the height of the debacle but honestly there was no time to even think about that.
In listening to the conversation the owner seemed unfazed, nonchalant and really seemed to care less about the situation or to the inconvenience it caused all those trying to save his pathetically maintained vessel..
The marina who manages the moorings, dock etc. wanted the boat gone, ASAP, as in moving it at midnight, but then someone said; "I think it may still be attached to a lobster pot" What? Huh?
It seems the crew who raced it, we are still unsure if the owner was even on-board for the race, had backed over a lobster pot while picking up the mooring. Oops.... I suspect & surmise the jarring of the pot tangling the shaft wiggled the already loose hose clamp stuffing box even looser. Sometime around 8:00 PM it likely popped off the log entirely and she started to fill very, very quickly.. After tangling the trap they had called a diver but the rumor was he did not clear it before the crew headed home. The crew left the boat with no one on-board.
We really have no clue on this point, about it still being stuck to a lobster pot, other than the boat would not tow straight the next morning.... In the pitch black we had no way to know if it was still tangled or not and after all that bailing, none of us were getting in the water to check it. The boat was left to sit overnight with the water flow greatly reduced, it was all we could do. I mean really, why should we care, more than the owner does, about his own boat....
Tow Boat US had been called, I suspect by the marina, and sent a representative boat with a 120V crash pump. This photo is really quite representative of the entire night, a virtual blur..
Once the crash pump was on-board it sucked the bilge sections dry in no-time at all.
If you think all my harping on safe electrical installations is over the top, think again! This 120V pump was being fed by an on-board inverter, one that was improperly wired, and it gave me the shock of my life when I went to move it from one bilge compartment to the other. I grabbed the pumps handle to move it and ZAAAAAAP! It was hard to even let go yet no breaker ever tripped. My entire arm was still tingling for about 30 minutes. SAFE AC installations, even inverters, DO matter!!!!
ZAAAAAAP!!!
Shortly after being zaaaaaped I went to check on the bow pump and wham... I slipped on slimy diesel saturated bilge pad that had been abandoned in the bilge. Come on really? Is your boats bilge a trash can now too????? For Christ sake already!!
In the above photo you can now see a bit more clearly the abandoned bilge pump strainer as well as the abandoned bilge pump wiring. This owner KNOWS this boat is not safe but apparently DOES NOT CARE.....
I suspect this boat, when you consider the horrendous condition & lack of upkeep, should be totaled. The engine got drenched and the boat was not even towed until about 11:00 am the next day. When you pickle an engine it needs to happen ASAP...
The next day at about 10:45 am Tow Boat US showed up:
throughout this entire ordeal, even the next day the owner never showed up nor did any crew only the tow boat operator, some marine help and us bystanders in teh anchorage. An utter lack of respect for the vessel and human life by this owner...
If you race on other peoples boats please do your best to ensure the vessel is SAFE before setting foot on it.. If this was an offshore race I suspect crew members would have become floaters. There would have been no buckets, no pumps and no marine professionals to help locate and stop the leak. The boat simply would have sunk and people could have easily died.
As for the racing communities out there I challenge all of you to STOP boat owners like this from participating in your events. This will be brought up at my next board meeting for sure. I've already spoken with our club manager and have a message out to our race officer. I will fight tooth and nail to see that folks like this are barred from our own clubs race events until the boat is known to be SAFE.
Please practice safe boating!
The sun had just recently dipped below the horizon, over an idyllic picture perfect Maine post card evening, the seals were barking, it was quiet, peaceful & serene. As I am sipping a glass of fine wine, while checking tomorrows weather on my iPad, in the cockpit I glance over to catch the last few nits of daylight, on what is close to the longest day of the year, yet something was odd.. I did not quite recognize what it was but a few minutes later I glance over again and this time it hits me like Mike Tyson chewing on my ear... I look at my wife and simply say; "I gotta go, that boat is sinking."
After Saturday nights debacle I realized I had actually I captured her bow about 15-20 minutes before the five gallon bucket brigade began. Unfortunately in the excitement my phone was on our boat during the height of it so this is the only photo I have of her sinking. She dipped to about half way up the tops sides and this is nowhere near as low as she got..
This is what she looked like the next morning for some perspective, and even here she had been slowly leaking all night..
That's a LOT of freaking water!!
I suppose every area has one, you know, the Mr.Magoo of boating, who does less than zero maintenance, sails a debacle of a boat that is 150% UNSAFE AT ANY SPEED, (my apologies to Mr. Nader) and who has no qualms posting ads for naive crew wishing to get on a sailboat & learn to race.
Let this event sink in and then PLEASE think twice about the boats yous set foot on. After spending nearly four hours on this boat on Saturday night, I can honestly say I would not feel safe setting foot on her again, even on the hard. I mean no ill will to the owner but I hope the insurance company totals her to at least take him off the water for a while. I only hope for this to slow the eventual death or injury to one of his crew due to his insanely unsafe boating practices...
"I gotta go that boat is sinking." are the last words I said to my wife before literally launching myself into the dinghy and blasting over, well as fast at 2.5 horses can blast, to a 45' derelict racing sailboat that was now bow down to about half way up the topsides.
Seconds before I got there apparently two guys from the marina got there too. I had mistaken them for crew of the sinking boat, but they were just bystanders who noticed it at about the same time I did. They were both about half way down the companion way, in pitch black, with water nearly mid thigh deep.
"Do you have a bucket?" one asked me. "No" I answered. "Have you turned on the bilge pumps?" I asked. "We can't find them?" they answered. "WTF" I am now thinking, these guys sailed here on this boat and don't even know where the bilge switches are? They had not, but I did not know this at the time. At this point one of the guys has grabbed a bucket from the marina launch and bailing began immediately.
I began the frantic search for the manual bilge pumps handle. You know the handle that should ALWAYS be within inches of the manual bilge pump?? Not..... I frantically searched every nook and cranny in the cockpit to no avail. Nothing in the lazarettes but piles of rotted running rigging, filth and grime and no sign of anything related to safety or good safe boating. At this point I realize I need to go grab my own manual bilge pump handle and some head lamps. I yelled to the two guys bailing that I would be right back and the last thing I said was;
"Try to find the leak, she's sinking lower, we're not keeping up."
I buzzed back over to our boat where I yelled to my wife from about ten feet away;
"Can you reach into the winch holder on the pedestal and pass me the bilge pump handle and grab me the three headlamps in the saloon table as well as the hand held VHF?"
Within about 10 seconds I had everything I needed, just as it should be, in an emergency.
When I got back to the sinking boat I tried to insert the bilge pump handle, but it was a no-go. The boat apparently uses a different handle than the rest of the world. D'oh.. I won't even go into the sheer stupidity of a non-industry standardized emergency bilge pump handle, when it comes to safety.. After realizing my own bilge pump handle would not fit, I hailed on CH 9, the working channel of the anchorage we were in, for a bilge pump handle to help save the sinking boat.
With head lamps, and more people showing up to help, we now had multiple 5 gallon buckets and a chain of guys from the saloon all the way up the companionway to the deck. We were daisy chaining 5 gallon buckets overboard at about a 3-5 second interval. There is something very eerie about knowingly being inside a derelict, ill-maintained boat, that is mid thigh deep, and not knowing why it is sinking. A very scary feeling for sure..
At about that point I heard one of the marina guys below say he found the leak! In the pitch black, he was able to locate the leak by feeling cold water pouring into the boat near the stuffing box. A true marine professional! He was then able to slide the hose back onto the fiberglass shaft log and slow down the leak.
After the VHF call we received half a dozen handles but only one of them fit. Immediately a guy I know who came over to help, I'll call him Johnny, but that's not his real name. Johnny went to work pumping the bilge manually from the cockpit. He was frantically pumping away, like a teenage boy with a Farrah Faucett poster, but the flow was meager at best. He said that initially the pump felt like it was doing something, for perhaps the first 20 pumps, then it quickly faded to something akin the pee-stream of a chipmunk. You guessed it, a dead pump diaphragm due to LACK OF MAINTENANCE.
While reading this please keep in-mind that this vessel is a very active race boat that routinely has novice crew and even does such offshore races as Marblehead to Halifax. Scary stuff! How this boat ever passed a legit race inspection for offshore racing is a FU¢K!ING STAIN on the racing community.
Back to the buckets... Ok no problem we now have headlamps & multiple buckets let's find those bilge pump switches and get them turned on. "Ok they're on." a guy yells. "Anything out the stern?" I ask over the commotion. The response, "NOTHING!" As I bend over to check the port side I am instantly doused by a five gallon bucket of stinky, diesely bilge water, "Ugh"... Ok check starboard side, "NOTHING!".. WTF, no working bilge pumps? Well the batteries are submerged so not such a big surprise...
At this point the guys are bailing to beat the band so I dive below to get a screw driver to re-attach the stuffing box hose and slow the leak further. After no less than 5 minutes of searching there is not a tool or screw driver to be found that can tighten a simple hose clamp on this 45 foot vessel. Perhaps they were there, but tools not easily accessible, is just as good as no tools at all. So, back into the dinghy I go. "Cara", I say from the dinghy as I approach, "Please open the top drawer in the nav station and pass me one of the orange handle screw drivers.". Within 5 seconds I have a screw driver in-hand and am heading back towards the boat.
Back on the boat I make my way down the companionway, while ducking the bucket brigade, to attempt to tighten the stuffing box. As I reach in there I can still feel the cold water flowing in. The water is still up to my shoulder, while accessing the stuffing box, and I can't really see the stuffing box yet but I can freely rotate & wiggle both hose clamps around the stuffing box hose. "Are you freaking kidding me?" I mutter. I have now been attempting to tighten the clamps for about three or four minutes but every time I think I have the "nut driver" on the clamp bolt it rotates away from me. As boats go a job that's easy with two hands is impossible with one handed access... "Ricky" I yell to another guy I know, and no it's not his real name, "Can you get any access to the stuffing box from starboard?", "I am shining my head lamp on it now." I say.
Within a few seconds I see Ricky's hand but Ricky can't see the stuffing box, he can only feel it.
Ricky's hand on our second tightening attempt, after the water had subsided a bit:
"Holy $hit this thing just rotates!" he say's... "I know!"..
I reach down and rotate the clamp to where I think I need it oriented, which is tough to do in shoulder deep water that is occluded with bilge grime, oil sheen, floating Rotella quarts and anti-freeze gallons bumping off my thighs.
I rotated the clamp and manually guided Ricky's thumb to it and said; "Press hard." Ricky presses and I begin to make a few turns, then a few more, then more and more and more. I am beginning to think this clamp was never tight at all...??? We managed to get the clamp somewhat snug then moved to the other one. The second clamp takes nearly 15 turns before it even starts to "grab" or compress the hose. Once again I am left thinking WTF...???
Finally, after destroying my arms & hands on sharp items in the access area to the packing gland, read minimal to no access, I can no longer feel a rush of cold water but it's definitely still leaking some. Ricky & I need to wait until the water level drops to below the stuffing box to really know for sure, but we are still a long way from that. Keep bailing...!!
The bucket brigade guys are doing yeoman's work, and we now have enough guys to rotate as they tire out. The water level is dropping slowly but steadily and this is good news. Hell it's a 45 foot high volume boat so it might as well be an Olympic sized swimming pool to the guys bailing BY HAND with 5 gallon buckets..
By now the water level has dropped enough so that we can actually see through the murky water that there's another manual bilge pump in the bilge? (photo taken after I grabbed my phone) It's an odd manual set up for sure with only enough outlet hose to reach the galley sink.
We fed the hose to the sink and began pumping... NADA... Dead diaphragm in pump #2 as well. So far on the manual bilge pumps we are 0 for 2.. Did I mention that this boat is poorly-maintained.... (grin)
"But wait there more if you act now you'll get not one, but two....." Look really closely at this picture. What do you see? Do you see the screws all backed out of the pumps housing? Me too?
The owner or person in-charge of maintenance KNEW THIS PUMP DID NOT WORK AND FAILED TO FIX IT! We only know this fact because they were also too damn lazy to finish threading the screws all the way back into the pump housing...
I wish someone could tell me how to work a pump like this, in waist deep water, when the galley drain is at the same level as the water outside the boat??? Apparently 20' of low budget corrugated hose & a new diaphragm is too much to spend on the safety for your naive crew eh..... Physics 101 here folks..
After this event I am honestly starting to think we need MORE CASES like the Cheeki Rafiki where the owner is held accountable & liable for repairs or lack there of that result death or injury. I now further believe this liability should also extend to the race communities that continue to allow these sorts of boats & owners to participate INCLUDING MY OWN CLUB! There is NO EXCUSE for this level of disrespect for your crews life. NONE!!
I hate to be a Ron Popeil but "Wait, there's more."
The water level finally gets down to the point where we could see this:
Abandoned bilge pump strainer basket
What do you suppose that is? I knew instantly that it was a strainer basket for a Rule BILGE PUMP. Yes, the pump was gone, apparently had failed, wires were cut and left to dangle in bilge water and the pump was never replaced!!!
No, I am NOT kidding, you really can't make this $hit up.
This is why the bilge switches did not work.
"But wait, there's more..........."
Lest you think ripping out one bilge pump, and failing to replace it, is bad, how about ripping out TWO bilge pumps and failing to replace them........?????????? I suspect even Bubbles from Trailer Park Boys would own a better maintained boat than this. Here kitty......
The second abandoned bilge pump strainer basket....
Shake your head and laugh all you want but I am not kidding about this at all. At one point in time this vessel had no less than four working bilge pumps two manual pumps and two centrifugal Rule type bilge pumps. It now has ZERO, unless you count a small diaphragm pump with a 100% clogged intake screen.....
As the water level dropped a bit more we could hear a faint noise and realized that it was a small diaphragm pump under the galley sink. It appeared to be, what many moons ago may have been a gray water sump for an icebox? Of course the sump it was sucking out of now had a hole that allowed it to drain direct into the bilge for which there were no working bilge pumps....
In our flipping of switches it must have been turned on? Interestingly enough, or not, considering the batteries and much of the electrical system were UNDER WATER, it was the only thing that actually worked on the DC bus and it was far to small to do much more than empty an ice box of melted ice.....
Oh and how can I forget the batteries....
A fully submerged battery!
Please, please, please THE BILGE IS NO PLACE FOR BATTERIES! This battery is BELOW the cabin sole boards on a very shallow bilge boat. DUMB, DUMB, DUMB. This practice alone should disqualify any boat from off-shore racing, but I digress.
In this debacle even the house bank which sits higher, under the aft cabin berth, got submerged. Sorry for the bad pic this is just how the night went.
If you question the speed of DC corrosion please understand that these terminals went from silver to eaten/eroded almost no time at all. The bubbles around the negative terminal are DC corrosion physically eating away at the battery terminals.
I will say it again, BATTERIES SHOULD NOT BE IN THE BILGE!!!
Despite the AGM batteries getting submerged the little belt driven Par-Max pump was still very slowly ticking over. It was not however moving any water. Why? The strum screen was totally clogged due to the bilge being as dirty as a Central American Dump. One guy tried to remove the strum screen but the hose clamp would not come off so he resorted to a knife to cut the pumps intake hose. Water finally started coming out of the stern, all be it very, very slowly.
One of the marina guys actually went and grabbed a 12V group 27 battery and a small bait well pump to get all the pumping power we could. He jury rigged it in the boats forward sail locker and aimed the hose out the hatch, it worked pretty well but compared to the volume of water it really amounted to a Chipmunks pee stream GPM wise.. This would have been much easier if the owner actually cared enough about human life to actually maintain a single working bilge pump on-board, but again I digress....
One of the guys who knows the owner realizes the owners phone number is in his phone back on his boat so we jump back into the dinghy and go grab it. I also grab my phone on the way back so I can snap a few shots of the mayhem seen above. I am sorry I did not get any shots at the height of the debacle but honestly there was no time to even think about that.
In listening to the conversation the owner seemed unfazed, nonchalant and really seemed to care less about the situation or to the inconvenience it caused all those trying to save his pathetically maintained vessel..
The marina who manages the moorings, dock etc. wanted the boat gone, ASAP, as in moving it at midnight, but then someone said; "I think it may still be attached to a lobster pot" What? Huh?
It seems the crew who raced it, we are still unsure if the owner was even on-board for the race, had backed over a lobster pot while picking up the mooring. Oops.... I suspect & surmise the jarring of the pot tangling the shaft wiggled the already loose hose clamp stuffing box even looser. Sometime around 8:00 PM it likely popped off the log entirely and she started to fill very, very quickly.. After tangling the trap they had called a diver but the rumor was he did not clear it before the crew headed home. The crew left the boat with no one on-board.
We really have no clue on this point, about it still being stuck to a lobster pot, other than the boat would not tow straight the next morning.... In the pitch black we had no way to know if it was still tangled or not and after all that bailing, none of us were getting in the water to check it. The boat was left to sit overnight with the water flow greatly reduced, it was all we could do. I mean really, why should we care, more than the owner does, about his own boat....
Tow Boat US had been called, I suspect by the marina, and sent a representative boat with a 120V crash pump. This photo is really quite representative of the entire night, a virtual blur..
Once the crash pump was on-board it sucked the bilge sections dry in no-time at all.
If you think all my harping on safe electrical installations is over the top, think again! This 120V pump was being fed by an on-board inverter, one that was improperly wired, and it gave me the shock of my life when I went to move it from one bilge compartment to the other. I grabbed the pumps handle to move it and ZAAAAAAP! It was hard to even let go yet no breaker ever tripped. My entire arm was still tingling for about 30 minutes. SAFE AC installations, even inverters, DO matter!!!!
ZAAAAAAP!!!
Shortly after being zaaaaaped I went to check on the bow pump and wham... I slipped on slimy diesel saturated bilge pad that had been abandoned in the bilge. Come on really? Is your boats bilge a trash can now too????? For Christ sake already!!
In the above photo you can now see a bit more clearly the abandoned bilge pump strainer as well as the abandoned bilge pump wiring. This owner KNOWS this boat is not safe but apparently DOES NOT CARE.....
I suspect this boat, when you consider the horrendous condition & lack of upkeep, should be totaled. The engine got drenched and the boat was not even towed until about 11:00 am the next day. When you pickle an engine it needs to happen ASAP...
The next day at about 10:45 am Tow Boat US showed up:
throughout this entire ordeal, even the next day the owner never showed up nor did any crew only the tow boat operator, some marine help and us bystanders in teh anchorage. An utter lack of respect for the vessel and human life by this owner...
If you race on other peoples boats please do your best to ensure the vessel is SAFE before setting foot on it.. If this was an offshore race I suspect crew members would have become floaters. There would have been no buckets, no pumps and no marine professionals to help locate and stop the leak. The boat simply would have sunk and people could have easily died.
As for the racing communities out there I challenge all of you to STOP boat owners like this from participating in your events. This will be brought up at my next board meeting for sure. I've already spoken with our club manager and have a message out to our race officer. I will fight tooth and nail to see that folks like this are barred from our own clubs race events until the boat is known to be SAFE.
Please practice safe boating!
