Giles and Paula's Great Retirement Adventure
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@Giles said in Giles and Paula's Great Retirement Adventure:
Long story short, Paula and I tried to pull the starboard rudder off the transom last Thursday. Rapid, unscheduled disassembly …
Seeing the damage and the huge effort you’ve to take for the repair, I would like to hear the long story now @Giles.
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The long story is not much longer really.
We were going for lunch in Yarmouth with friends. The harbour was shut to large boats, I think because there had been a fatality on a sailing boat the day before in the Needles Channel, and the yacht had been bought into Yarmouth harbour and it was moored on the large pontoon in the harbour with police and rescue services activity doing their investigations, so we were asked to pick up a mooring buoy outside the harbour. The conditions were tricky, with a lot of wind and current. Picking up a mooring buoy on SAKURA is a little complicated because the bow is so high above the water, we have to pick up the buoy from the stern and then walk the buoy to the bow. I had briefed everyone on board about what we had to do and what their individual responsibilities were (I'd even drawn diagrams of what we were going to do), we all had 2 way headsets on, so that we could communicate with each other through the manoeuvre. As I approached the buoy, Paula said she could grab the buoy with the hook and line I have made specifically for this purpose, it was earlier in the manoeuvre, than we had planned, but I said "OK lets just grab it". We did, but because the boat was not completely down wind/current of the buoy at that point, the boat pivoted on the buoy as the tension between the boat and the buoy increased. Net result, the buoy went under the swim platform and the chain attaching the buoy to the sea floor got caught between the starboard rudder and the transom. If the current and wind had not been so strong, I would have been able to thrust the stern to port and freed the chain, but the thruster had zero effect. I then made the rash decision to power her off the chain, that did the job, but basically pulled the rudder out of the transom, not by much, but enough to bend the rudder, and lift the mounting plate away from the transom at the base of the mounting. We started to take on water, not much and the bilge pumps coped easily, but basically not a good thing
Lesson learned: Stick to the the bloody plan and don't go freestyle.
Apart from the shit and aggro (which we deserve for being stupid, I am most upset because we could not use SAKURA whilst @goosehd and family were with us.
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@Giles …but a fantastic time was still had by all. You should also know that the kids have been asleep now for 13 hours and still no sounds of movement.
You may have even tired out Izzy
…although she recharges fairly quickly
"I don't give a shit what anyone else is doing, we will do what is best for us and our customers" - Giles P. :)
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@goosehd said in Giles and Paula's Great Retirement Adventure:
You may have even tired out Izzy
That girl needs zero help with tiring herself out....
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Getting there, Carl-the-GRP-man says that he should be able to hand over the boat to me and Matt for refitting the propellor etc on Monday night. Once that is done, I need to prime and antifoul/lanonlin the running gear and transom. I have booked a relaunch for Thursday, but I may even be able to pull that forwards to Wednesday....
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I woke up to fierce winds and a lot of rain. Impossible to apply primer in those conditions. Got to the boat to fix all the internal mechanicals, and there was a respite, so I managed to get the first coat of (thinned down) primer applied. Then is pissed down again, luckily the paint was touch dry by then, so all good. Need to leave this coat for as long as possible before second coat, so hoping for better weather later. Tomorrow morning, 2 coats of anti foul, and then back in the water.......
Mechanicals all fixed and secure (and working)....
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I am, because I fly to Morocco first thing Friday, so tomorrow is a sort of hard deadline.
But, on a positive note....I now understand a lot more about the boat, the hull construction, the steering mech etc, so in a masochistic sort of way, this cloud had a silver lining....
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@Giles said in Giles and Paula's Great Retirement Adventure:
And she floats...
nice, always a hand's breadth of water under the keel (as we say in german)
