www.soundingfree.com

Sounding Free on the rocks!
September, 2007
(click on any picture for a full size view)

Well, here is every sailors nightmare ...their boat on a lee shore. Sounding Free came ashore about 30 meters out from here, but alas I couldn't get an anchor set (the waves were huge). So, as the tide came in, so did the boat. The beach here at our house is mostly small rocks (fist sized), gravel and sand. It is not too bad, considering the rocks on the other side of that little jetty you see in the picture. But, it did quite a bit of damage (severe gouges, depth transducer, bottom of the rudder, etc). I called a salvage firm from Auckland (12 miles away) and had them there the very next day. They were superb, and had SF off the beach in 20 minutes. In all the bill came to over $9,000 for the hull and deck repairs, and $2,500 for the salvage firm.
Orapiu bay has a beautiful beach area, but not for boats!
This miserable piece of mooring gear got caught in the space between my hull and rudder, and came dragging ashore with Sounding Free. This is a very typical home-made mooring...the tire is filled with concrete.
The boat builder who was contracted by the insurance agent found the prospect of getting these sampson posts out a real headache. The carriage bolts in the forward bulkhead were very corroded...and simply spun in place. I had been wanting to replace the ancient manual windlass, so I drew up detailed plans to have a bowsprit cap made of heavy stainless steel. The idea was to replace the function of the sampson posts (compression posts for the bowsprit) and to allow me to have a top plate for mounting a new Maxwell 1500 windlass. We removed the windlass, cut off the bowsprit at the line shown, and then cut off the sampson posts level with the deck. We then filled the existing anchor chain holes, bolt holes and sampson post space with epoxy filler, and then covered it all with teak (also bonded with epoxy to the deck for strength).
The boat builder did a perfect job on this, and listened very carefully to what I wanted. Unusual in this day! After all the work was completed, the paint shop came up and perfectly matched the deck paint, blending around the edge of the teak pad.
The shop took my drawings and created this massive looking mounting out of heavy gauge stainless. It didn't look as big on paper! Read on to find out why I designed this with the plate extending forward on the top of the bowsprit.
See that cleat? That is one solid piece of steel that is welded right to the plate. The lead from the rollers is just perfect for a mooring line, and places the entire load fore-n-aft on the cleat. And that means the entire stainless mounting is holding it as well! In all there are seven 1/2" bolts extending through the deck, with hefty stainless backing plates on the other side, of course. There will also be a very massive cleat mounted just aft of the windlass mounting on the deck pad. I had a stainless angle backing plate made that will not only be bolted to the deck with 1/2" bolts, but also to the forward bulkhead. This will give me peace of mind again!
The insurance adjuster didn't want to try to individually repair the myriad gouges, so he authorized the yard to take all the paint off of the bottom. You can see the number of gouges that SF suffered (grey fill). After all these years, there were only a handful of small blisters...the yard was amazed...and those were easily repaired. When they finished with the grinding they spend a huge amount of time smooth sanding. After fairing, they sprayed two coats of epoxy barrier coating, followed by two of bottom paint.
And here she is, almost ready to go back in the water. The yard spent 5 weeks working on the hull (and letting it dry). It is so smooth and fair...I've never seen it looking so good,