A little more news

Skip spent several days in the BVI last month and brought back photos and news of Saralane. First though, a big thank you goes to Ted and Claudia in Nanny Cay who offered Skip a comfy place to stay and gave him rides to and from the ferry and the laundromat, and when schedules conflicted, they gave him the use of their hurricane battered car. Thanks T & C - we owe you. Hope Demeter is ship shape and back in the water soon.

To start with, he had difficulty getting into the boat because the compression on the starboard side of the hull  caused the slides to jam in the companionway. Once he got that sorted out and got a look below he first saw a a pile of things that had been thrown from the port side cupboards, that opened when Saralane fell over, onto the starboard side by the foot of the stove. Then he realized the pile of things was sitting in water that had collected under the stove and inside the stove as well.

Pile of stuff.... doesn't look too bad. Stove sure is at a funny angle.

Pile of stuff sitting in water that shouldn't be there.

Though we did lose one inverter to water, most electronics are on the port side, which is the high side since she’s starboard down. The problem is that she’s also bow down which doesn’t allow the rain water that collected in the cockpit to drain aft out the cockpit drains as it normally would. Water must have filled the cockpit several times over during the two storms and then a few more torrential rains they had in the weeks following. It flowed over the low rise between the cockpit and the companionway through the cracks in the slides (which aren’t meant to be water tight) and filled whatever compartments it reached on the starboard side. Our clothes are all stored there and the lower shelf of each storage area was completely under water.

Starboard side cupboards. The lower corners of the cushions were also soaking in water.

Skip's soggy clothes

My soggy clothes

Ditto galley things. Filthy, rusty floating galley things. 

This was after Skip drained the water. Yuk

Incredibly our batteries were working and Skip was able to connect them to a pump and remove most of the water. What he couldn't get that way, he mopped out with sponges and rags. It was slow going not just because of the awkward angle of the boat but he'd also pulled up floorboards to access various things. He tossed ruined things over the side and cleaned as much as he could, trying to get rid the mold before he has to lock her up and leave. He was also photographing as he went, both for us and for insurance purposes so that’s added to the slow pace. 


This was how it looked after he started to make some progress with the pump. That's all food and galley storage in the lower spaces below the clothing cupboards.

After a bit more progress you can see the water level dropping. You can also see the black residue left behind inside the clothes cupboards and on the wood on the settee. Still some water visible in the food storage area.
He was able to get all our soggy clothing to a laundromat and back on board which was a big plus.

The salon cushions were propped up on this surface and corners of several of them were in water too. Skip did his best to wash off the worst of the moldy water and let them dry in the sun while he worked below.

He’d also cleverly stowed the computer we use for navigation (and for watching movies) in a cupboard on the starboard side that he never even thought of putting it in before so we lost that too.

Pile of things to discard keeps growing

Our folder of original boat information, including detailed specs and drawings, was stored on the starboard side and was completely filled with water and turned to mush. Same goes for some of my business stuff in another container.

He made quite a bit of headway in the cleanup; this photo shows the same area with all the water drained and  an initial cleanup done.

As for the exterior... the solar panels are still attached and still working. (Thank you Steve for helping attach them, very securely as it turns out, back in the Bahamas in 2011.) The stern rails are bent and twisted and since they support the steel framework for the bimini and solar panels, that whole structure has been affected.

That giant mast belongs to the giant boat on our port side. You can see the broken outboard mount under the line on the far left.

John H's outboard was locked onto the port side stern rail on a wooden support but when the boat hit the ground, the wooden support broke. The outboard, which was still connected to it’s hoist, went swinging across to the starboard side and crashed into something, and is bashed up pretty badly. 

Our neighbor's giant mast, as seen from our cockpit.

Top of our mast with bent and/or missing equipment

Skip took a tarp with him to lash down over the cockpit in an attempt to divert water and keep things dry. It's rained pretty hard since then but a friend who's working on his boat in the yard checked on it and told us it's holding up just fine.

He also cut away whatever rigging he could to make the eventual righting of the boat easier. It's a real mess  with rigging and masts everywhere. 

Conversation continues slowly with our insurance company and even more slowly with the yard. Again, in the absence of any real information, there are still lots of conflicting stories and rumors flying about the yard and management; it's still not a conversation in which I want to publicly participate. We'll do whatever we can to help out and to support their efforts, and hopefully, eventually we'll all make some progress. 

Skip feels fairly confident that Saralane is still structurally sound, though it seems like a good idea to actually see her starboard side once she's righted before giving her the thumbs up. After seeing all the moldy interior shots we were trying to decide if she looked worse now or when we first bought her.  I think she was much worse then!

I'm sure I'm leaving some things out, but that's probably enough for now. We still feel optimistic about getting Saralane righted, but it's too soon to know how and when that might happen. We also don't know what our insurance company will think about our optimism (!) but it's too early for that conversation too.

Skip is on a delivery to Antigua and is planning to head back to Saralane afterwards to have another look at things. (If you happen to be in English Harbour early next week, say hi to Skip.... he's on the Outbound 46 Wynot.) Whenever there's anything to report, I'll put up another post. Thanks for hanging in there with us!