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Crazy day in the SC Harbor. The feds rolled into town and kicked the harbor patrol off of the water. Every gate is locked down with a chain and padlock, and we were advised that its a felony to enter. Rather than go off on a tirade about the bad things that happened today, I'd like to focus on the good. As everyone of you knows, the community spirit of people that own sailboats just can not be matched. I put the word out that my boat was taking on water, and about 20 people came down to help out. About 100 people called, emailed and text.
Like I said before, there was a long piece of dock wedged between my keel and rudder, and today I found out for sure that there was a boat tied to a cleat that was on that piece of dock. The Santa Cruz Sea Scout boat is parked in the neighboring slip, and they were out in full force getting their boat in order. They asked if I needed any help, so I had a handful of them hang on the boom so that we might be able to expose the cleat. Worked perfectly. We untied the cleat hitch and whatever boat was attached fell to the bottom. It immediately relieved the stress on my boat, and she was floating on her waterline again.
Then came time to find out where the water was coming from. The rudder port tube had cracked away form the hull, so we mixed up a batch of splashzone and tried to patch it up temporarily. We had about 20 of the Sea Scouts stand on the bow to expose the tube in order to ease the water pressure, which exposed the damaged rudder as well. There was a giant log stuck between the rudder and hull that we dislodged. I would have dove on it, but the surge is still quite strong, the water is basically stinky mud, and there is rigging and sunken boats all over.
As the second batch of Splashzone was going off, the Harbies came and made everyone leave. When the Sea Scouts got off of the bow, the uncured epoxy started to leak a little; way slower than before though. The bilge pump is working fine, and I installed a bank of solar panels in the cockpit, so hopefully she's going to stay afloat.
Unfortunately, I won't be able to check it, because right after they kicked us off the dock, they chained the whole place down.
I'll write up a more complete story in the next few days. I'm still pretty pissed off that I have the ability to positively save my boat from sinking, and am not allowed to go down and do it. Everyone's doing their best, but man, sometimes if the powers that be would just let us deal, without showing up with guns and badges and swinging dicks having some pissing match, things would work out for the better.
Gotta go put on my BDUs and go save my boat. Who wants to be my 'one phone call'?
Taken from Jeremy's SA post
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