I don't have any pictures from inside.
I did talk to the owner and Brewers workers and they said there was very minimal damage inside. I'll detail what they told me, but he said there was nothing to see from any pictures, other than the blood when he hit his head. This is a little long but I will give you some of the detail of what happened. He is a super safety concious skipper, but he had to go down for just a minute and was not at the helm for maybe a minute or two (and handed over the helm to someone he thought was better & that was competent enough). It was a exceptionally low tide and to make matters worst it was a new moon, etc etc, so. We get about 7-8 foot tides, so one hour either way and he wouldn't have hit that rock. (he measured about 10-11 inches off the bottom of keel). He said they were in 15 feet of water the moment before they hit and thinks the rock must have been like a apex or pinacle point. He also said a few inches each way and he would have most likely missed it or skimmed off the side. Unbelievably they hit that rock square in the middle perfectly. The worst part is he was just coming up through the companionway the moment they hit. He was just on the second step and went flying backwards smacking his head and body really bad. For a moment he felt like he might have broke his back. If he was in the cockpit or down below in a different spot he wouldn't have fallen so badly, it turned out to be the worst spot for that one moment and he fell hard backwards without his hands or arms to catch him. He's ok now and nothing permanent from what he says but he said he had one bruise that was the "king of all bruises" and lasted for a long long time. Now back to what happened to the boat. As I said the internal damage was minimal. He did say that there was a wooden "box" under the forward floorboards (outside the head area) that had to be fixed, but this is not a structural component but I believe it something to keep the water from the keel bolt area away from under the floor boards. I asked about the aft end and he said there was nothing. He too was very surprised. He said after they hit, it was of such force he really thought that they were going to have a lot of damage and possible be taking on water. As far as the boat went the worst loss was the rudder. After the keel hit a moment later the rudder hit. It didn't snap off, but they bent the rudderstock pretty bad, he said he could barely turn the helm. He's a big guy and he said it took him all his weight with both arms . He was trying to steer the boat out into safer water (so as to not fully lose the boat as there were more rocks and they were worrying about losing steerage and drifting into more) I guess the rudder and quadrant were bent so bad they were pinching in different places inside and outside the hull. Other than the things above the only thing he notices now is a slight vibration while running the engine in gear. After talking to surveyors and workers they realized they never looked at the engine nor the alignment (he has to bring it in for the winter anyway so that will be fixed then). They said its very likely to go out of alignment with a hit that had, not to mention he only has a bronze shaft and they bend easily (I should know I've done that myself) He said he always knew the C36 was a decent boat, but after this episode he is amazed at how well it held up. He said he feels exceptionally good about the boat now (His own words). Now he is not alone in that sentiment. The boat was brought to Brewers Yacht Haven in Stamford CT (they are by far the biggest Yard in the area and regularly work on multimillion dollar yachts and offshore race boats, etc. like the Blue Yankee, etc . Probably the premiere place in the area). They seen a lot of damaged boats brought into their facility . The people that worked on his boat were amazed at how little damage was done to the boat considering the huge chunk of lead taken out of the keel. The boat did flex a little as noted in the picture of the aft keel stub picture, you can see the bottom paint didn't flex and flaked off. I can't say that my C36 or any other boat would come out as well , or maybe even better. You never know ,it all depends on too many variables, but in this case, its indesputible that this C36 took this huge hit very well. True story. The people working on the boat at Brewers even made a comment that if it were another sailboat manufacturer (and they named a few - I will not name them here but you can guess - they were literally 4 that came out of their mouths) then the damage would have been 3 to 4 times as worse. (Their Word) They said they see these accidents all the time. As an FYI even Bruce Fornier (the general manager at Brewers) made a comment on how impressed he was in how well this guys C36 was built. His comment was something like "a brick sh*t house". Obviously thats a bit of an exageration, I know a lot more boats I would use that term for, but it does undesrcore that the C36 is not "Underbuilt". They have said the lighter or fast racing boats are the worst when they hit rock. Sometimes the whole hull spider cracks they said. But that is obvious as I would expect a fast around the buoys racers to be lighter built and thus faster, although you'd almost lose your boat if you hit a rock at speed. Maybe this was an exceptional situation, but then again, maybe it was not
Maybe some day I will show you of the picture of a fin keeled C36 off the coast of england that ran off course in the early morning right onto a rock reef. The owner & the authorities over there were amazed the boat had minimal damage Sat on the rocks and were able to remove on the next tide. (Maybe us C36ers could do a bit better job navigating though. LOL
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