First loss of the season

[mmd]

I imagine that the keel is pretty banged up, too. Depending on which shop gets the repair job (if it is repairable), I'll probably be getting a call in the next week or two. I seem to have a developing track record on how to repair smashed GRP keels on lobster boats. Not glamorous, but it pays the bills.

[Harry Miller]

What an awfully sad story. I don’t know what else to say.

[Peerie Maa]

I imagine that the keel is pretty banged up, too. Depending on which shop gets the repair job (if it is repairable), I'll probably be getting a call in the next week or two. I seem to have a developing track record on how to repair smashed GRP keels on lobster boats. Not glamorous, but it pays the bills.

What are the odds that it will float when they have dug a channel to the watter. Buoyancy bags or what?
Mind you as they can drive back hoes to it, they could probably get a big mobile crane down there.

[mmd]

What are the odds that it will float when they have dug a channel to the watter. Buoyancy bags or what?
Mind you as they can drive back hoes to it, they could probably get a big mobile crane down there.

Floating depends on where it is holed, if holed at all (given the boulders on the beach, it is likely 50-50 that it is holed). Lots of wind exposure on that beach, but very little wave action. If aft of the engine room, which is directly beneath the house, it is golden - the area is live wells and a small hold. This is likely due to the shape of the hull. Aft of the live wells/hold area is the steering flat which also holds auxiliary fuel tanks - independent of the hull and probably at least half-empty, and finally a full-beam lazarette. The steering flat and laz are well above the rocks, so would be intact. So, if the ER is intact, the boat will float pretty much on an even keel if the hold floods, albeit a bit low in the water. If the ER is holed, the 4.9m tide will give enough time to have one of the excavators lift the hull long enough to put a temporary patch on the hull so it will float at high tide, then it can be towed the half-kilometre or so to the slipway at Yarmouth Bar where a hydraulic trailer will pick it up and drive it to the selected boatshop for repairs.

The wild card in this recovery - if they are recovering it and not destroying it to remove it from the beach (probably not) - is that, given that I think I know where the boat is located, I think that the excavators may be clearing a path to get a hydraulic boat trailer to the boat so they can lift it and simply drive it off the beach. I have to go to town tomorrow, and plan to take a drive by to see what is transpiring.

[Peerie Maa]

Waaay back when, I worked for an offshore design house, I learned that Lloyds preferred/specified epoxy resin for structural repairs on GRP, is that the case now where you are?

[Bob (oh, THAT Bob)]

^(#34) Man I have my doubts about digging that out, mighty rocky there. Maybe. Short of a huge crane, my guess would've been lifting the hull with big air bags to get stout rails underneath to slide it back toward the water, but that sounds pretty hard too.

EDIT: Ah, I see now about possibly just digging to get a trailer in there. Yeah that makes more sense, a lot less digging.

[mmd]

An update on the beached lobster boat F/V Guess: She has been written off an will be crushed and trucked away today. I visited the site yesterday and spoke with a friend of the owner, who was on-site salvaging what he could before the trucks arrive today. He was pretty bummed out by the whole thing, as he had just completed a major refit of the boat about two months ago. He was on-site the morning after the boat went ashore and was convinced that the boat was salvageable. She came ashore about 1200 feet from where my pictures show her, but in their efforts to recover the boat (pictures shown at the beginning of this discussion) involved excavator operators who were unfamiliar with how to move boats resulting in moving the boat without proper skids and pushing on parts of the boat that weren't strong enough to withstand a push, causing irreparable damage to the hull. The grounding was caused by the crewman on-watch as they steamed for home falling asleep. Fortunately the boat was insured, so a significant portion of her value will be recovered. Unfortunately, the owner has lost pretty much his whole lobster season, a loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

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