Sod`s Law
There are times when you should just go home and start again another day, times when somebody is trying to tell you something, times when the alarm bells start ringing. Last Sunday was one of those days.
We had travelled down to North Wales on Saturday and met up with Mike, the owner of Tern Tu ready to launch both boats on Sunday. Maybe even then we should have realised something was far from right, it had all gone too smoothly, this was after all launch weekend.
Sunday had dawned grey and overcast with a North Easterly blowing at about 15 knots. We were up by 7am and down at Pwllheli shortly after, rigging Casulen ready for the season. High water was just before 9am and it was springs so we had plenty of water to play with. Maybe even now we should have gone home before it was too late, after all nothing had gone wrong, we had remembered to attach the wind indicator and VHF ariel before hoisting the mast, attached all the rigging to the correct chain plates with no twisted wires, even worked out all the halyards, reefing lines and sheets without creating a complete tangle. We stupidly assumed that we were getting better at this, we let our guard down, relaxed. Never again.
Tern Tu was first to be launched, and being a Junk rigged Corribee, it is easier to drop the mast in off the harbour wall so we intended to raft both boats up with Tern Tu on the inside. Mike`s 11 year old son was on board as we backed it down the slip to the waters edge, a rope attached to the trailer and the handbrake applied. We struggled to release the hitch but finally we got it free but by now had committed our first mistake, no one was holding the trailer. Off it shot down the slip, handbrake, only a fool would have expected it to work after sitting unused since last October and three fools were standing on that slip. If she had been a new boat the launching would have been perfect! Tern Tu left the trailer, (this having been brought to a halt just before the rope ran out), but the problem was we had no line on the boat as Mike had intended to be onboard. With 15 knots or so of wind blowing Tern Tu quickly began to drift towards other moored boats. A elderly gentleman had been inflating his tender in the car park, I somewhat abruptly grabbed this off him and set off in hot pursuit. Steven Redgrave would not have stood a chance that day, and Mike had soon jumped onboard Tern Tu where Louis had already managed to start the engine but had been unable to lower it into the water, Tern Tu was soon tied alongside the harbour wall and I had returned the tender thanking the gentleman and apologising for being so abrupt. He was most understanding, I thank him again.
We had a laugh about what had happened, thinking that we had got away with it, not realising that it had hardly even started, we really should have gone home. Casulen was next down the slip, rope on the trailer, handbrake on, and we had checked it was working. I’m not quite sure what happened next but I was on the back of the boat checking the outboard, just in case and I think it was assumed I was further forward, which I suppose I should have been when she landed heavily on her unprotected spade rudder and shot backwards jamming half on and half off the trailer, the towing hitch way above the pushpit. (Casulen is on an original 2-wheel Corribee trailer).
After a few seconds frantic shoving she was afloat and clear, my Father asking me if she was taking on water, telling me to check the lazerette and the bilges. I think we all thought that we must have put the rudder through the bottom of the boat. I found it hard to believe that she wasn’t taking on water, I seem to remember been asked several times “are you sure”. Everything seemed fine, the rudder was still moving and I motored over to moor up alongside Tern Tu. We rechecked for water and looked closely at the base of the rudder tube in the lazerette but it all seemed OK. I think the fact that this had been strengthened in our 06/07 winter rebuild probably saved major damage. It was decided that we would have to lift her to check what we had done but for now would get Tern Tu`s mast in so at least she was out of the way.
We really, really should have gone home. We lowered Tern Tu`s mast down through the deck threaded all the cables through the mast out of the way and lowered it into the mast foot. This had been rebuilt over the winter and the mast bolt hole drilled through in situ out of the boat before the foot had been fitted into the hull epoxying in place. By now you must be able to guess, it just was not our day, the bolt would not go through. The mast was lifted, turned, jiggled, torches came out, cables were moved but still the bolt would not go through the other side of the mast foot, the hole was misaligned.
It was springs as I have said and by now the water was falling rapidly, Louis called out 0.3 mtrs depth below Tern Tu`s keels it was time to go, we quickly lashed the mast down deciding to sort it on her mooring as the hole would have to be reworked, and jumped aboard Casulen. We should have been at home. Casulen was aground! Yes we tried everything, including jumping into the water to try and lift her off, but we were there for the tide. Tern Tu is bilge, Casulen fin, look at the figures, 0.3m is 12”, Bilge keel 2` 2”, Fin Keel 3`, we should have still been afloat, just, and we were the outside berth. How often does the bottom get shallower the further away from the quay you are? I can answer that one, on the Sunday when you should have stayed at home in bed.
Thankfully Casulen has legs (read up in the technical section) that we had just finished the week before but they had never been tried. Somebody was looking after us, they must have been, the legs worked perfectly and we were soon sitting high and dry. I`m sure fate had played a part as we could now inspect the damage to Casulen and found that although all the fairing filler at the base of the rudder tube had cracked off and the base of the rudder was heavily bruised, the hull seemed unaffected. We decided to repair her in the bay by her mooring over the coming Bank Holiday weekend, drying her out on the tides and fairing in the rudder tube base. We are also going to drop her rudder just to make sure it is still straight. Low water was at about 1630hrs so we now had plenty of time to rework Mike`s mast and sort out his Junk rig and by 1900hrs we were just lifting on the tide.
We should have stayed there for the week. The plan was now just to get out of Pwllheli harbour and motor across to our mooring by Abersoch about 4-5 miles away. Engines running we cast off but something was wrong Casulen had hardly any drive and the tide took us backwards into shallower water. (I think we were struggling to believe this was happening!) With the engine at full revs and some pushing with a spinny pole we got away, desperately looking for a free mooring, still trying to think what was wrong with the engine. Mike got a line to us, allowing us time to think and we lifted the engine to find the prop chocked with weed. Obvious! This was a Seagull, great engines but they love weed; we knew this and we were always clearing it, but first day of the season with a day like we were having!
Casulen and Tern Tu worked their way out of Pwllheli against the tide and the wind with the light rapidly failing. When we turned along the coast we had about 15-18 knots of following wind from the port quarter so at least it was pushing us in the right direction even though it was onshore and we were quite close in. Tern Tu was ahead with just Mike onboard, (his son Louis having gone home with his mother, school and all that,) when we noticed that the boat had stopped and Mike was trying to restart the outboard. As I have said so many times now “there are days…” We managed to get a line to Mike, it was either that or anchor, the only problem being that if he left the helm to try and sort the engine the boat went off course and we had to head down wind towards the shore to straighten things out. We all resigned ourselves to towing, so we got a Jib on Casulen and were soon making a steady 4.5 knots. In a strange way it had become funny, laughable, we were now just waiting for the next problem. An hour later we were in the bay where our mooring are but trying to get Tern Tu onto her mooring was a nightmare as we had left a hard tender on it at low water. As soon as we turned up wind our speed dropped to almost nothing and our course was erratic to say the least. The wind was throwing quite a chop into the bay and Mike`s being a drying mooring is quite close in and shallow, even at high water, which thankfully it was. We had just decided that we would have to try running down wind to pick it up when we saw Mike yelling (we couldn’t hear him). He had somehow got his engine running. He cast off and we hung around until we saw him safe onto his mooring before motoring out to pick up ours. Mike picked us up in the tender or should I say we jumped as he passed, (we’d have been loosing paint if he had come alongside in that chop,) and made it through the surf to land on the beach.
At last it was over, or so we thought. Just at the point where we leave the beach three people were trying to push a 20` day fishing boat through the surf, we couldn’t just ignore them. It transpired that their boat had broken its mooring and been washed up onto the beach and they were trying to refloat it at high water. With three more pairs of hands we soon had it back in and as they disappeared into the night we positively ran off the beach. We dropped Mike off at home in Manchester around midnight and arrived back in Cumbria around 2am, five hours sleep before I had to get up for school.
Lessons learned, one boat, one day. If things start to go wrong as they did last Sunday, don’t fight it, come back another time. I can remember reading a quote somewhere, but can’t remember who wrote it; `If everything is going well don’t worry, it won’t last` or something like that. The learning never stops.
We learnt a lot last Sunday.
Jonny.