Update - Sunken Yacht

[Lakesailor]

You may remember Did You Feel It Touch? Mast sticking out of water.

Today there was progress.....

The barge arrived and an hour or so later..

Closer examination showed that as Sybarite surmised it was a wooden boat.

It had been on the mooring for a few weeks, so it could have any of a lot of things apart from take-up. I don't think I would put a boat in and not check up on it as often as possible until I was sure it was OK.
Bet that recovery cost a bit.

 

[PeteCooper]

Looks like a Kestrel 22 to me. Shame.

 

[graham]

Yes,I thought it may be a Kestrel.

The owner must be gutted,she looks quite well looked after from what is visible in the pics.

Shows the importance of having wreck removal included in your insurance.i suspect that the recovery could outweigh the value of the boat.

 

[Captain Haddock]

Crikey, the poor owner.

This is one of those things that every boat owner secretly dreads.

I remember rowing to my mooring where I expected my boat to be and it wasn't there. I rowed several time around the bouy thinking had it sunk, been ablaze, exploded. I looked at the usual boats that were moored there as if to ask the boats themselves do you know what happened?!

Needless to say I paniced and felt tears welling up as I wondered what the hell had happened to my pride and joy, had I lost her forever?

I rowed ashore at super human speed and found the boat yard owner to tell him my boats missing and I'm going to call the Police.

He then casully informed me he moved it to another creek and wanted to put another boat there for a while and forgot to tell me.

B*****d!

I left the mooring soon after that and didn't return to his yard again.

 

[Lakesailor]

Yep. Kestrel 22

 

[mirabriani]

How do you suppose they put the lifting straps in position?
Initial lift on the mast?
Then a diver?

I just have to know!

Regards Briani

 

[LadyInBed]

Good question, maybe they just feel for it!

 

[Lakesailor]

They used a soft strop on the mast to raise the boat slightly (in the water the only real weight would be the ballast and engine) then slid the slings under each end and juggled them into position. I did wonder about that, but then reasoned that the mast and rigging take a lot more stress in a blow. They do have a diver (with a very smart commercial dry suit) but obviously thought this the most appropriate method.
I didn't see the change-over part of the operation from strop to slings, but I think they had secured the yacht against the barge with extra strops. One of which was the original mooring strop that they had fished out.
After the last shot in my sequence they dropped a pump suction pipe into the cockpit and started to empty the lake out of the boat.
It looked like a few days cleaning might recover the situation. Just the motor and electrics to sort then.

 

[Strathglass]

I have recovered two boats which had sunk at their moorings.
Fortunately the waters were tidal (5-6metres), this made recovery much easier.

The first was a grp drop keel cruiser, the keel had dropped out. Several 50 gallon plastic barrels strapped to the hull at low water and when the tide came in the whole lot was towed to above the low water mark and refloated on the next tide.
The owner was able to recover everything and put her back in commision.
I saw her for sale in Nairn marina a few years ago and she looked none the worse for her swamping.

The second one was my own boat.

I had been away on business for a few weeks and as soon as I got back rushed down to the sailing club to see my pride and joy swing about on her mooring.
All I could see was the tip of a mast.
Fortunately she was an old 25' wooden open day sailer with no electronics. The cockpit cover had moved a bit and a week of bad weather had swamped her. She had been under for a week sitting upright with the keel in the mud.
Recovered using barrels again, a hose down to get rid of the mud then back on the mooring with her cover secured.

After that event she was as tight as a drum. The planking had swollen and had completely stopped taking any water. Previous to that she had taken about half a gallon a week.

It was still a very worrying experiance.

Iain

 

[Mirelle]

I've owned two boats that had sunk - the one I have now and the one before, Both had mud bethind the beam shelf, some years after the event. The last boat had been stolen and run ashore on the Nass at West Mersea; this boat had ridden over a stone quay on an exceptional high tide and bilged herself - in both cases before I bought them. Did them no harm at all.

I managed to sink my own launch but she has bouyancy tanks so she floated gunwales awash; I was incredibly lucky with the 1GM10, which came to no harm at all - apart from the alternator rewind, that is...