Ay Ay Caramba

Treadwell Bay, NY
No LL

You'll remember that a few weeks ago I screwed up and allowed the dinghy painter to get wrapped around the propeller. I had to dive with a knife in my teeth to free it. Guess what? We did it again. Except that this time Libby was the culprit and she did it much more thoroughly than I ever did.

We were anchoring in Treadwell Bay. We were hurrying because of an approaching rain squall. I was tending the anchor snubber. I yelled back at Libby to move the boat forward a bit. She was not at her station at the helm, she had ducked inside to avoid the rain. When she heard me yell, she leaned back out into the cockpit, and without looking around, she engaged forward.

There was a big crunch sound. I knew something bad happened but I couldn't see what. Libby yelled, "Help!" I looked back. The dinghy was inverted and sunk, only the front of the bow stuck above the water. Ay ay caramba was what Ricky Ricardo would have said.

Libby, feeling about as large as a beetle, imagined the worst. She asked, "Will we have to hire a diver to go looking for the outboard motor?" Until that time I hadn't thought about the motor, but peering over the side I could see it still attached.

Well, there is really no choice what to do about such a situation. We couldn't even wait for the storm to pass because the dinghy was rubbing against Tarwathie with every passing wave and digging a gouge. In to the water I went, knife in teeth.

The first thing I did was cut the painter lead to the dinghy so that I could move it out of my way. Then I had to saw and saw and saw to get the multiple wraps of rope away from the propeller. We carry a super sharp knife, never used for just such occasions. However, since that knife was used last month, it wasn't so sharp any more. It took me 15-20 minutes to get all the rope cut away from the cutlass bearing and to verify that the propeller shaft rotated normally.

Next job, rescue the motor. Libby dropped a line over the side. I dove down and tied it to the motor with a bowline. [Attention all you sailor wannabes. You need to learn your bowlines so well that you can tie them upside down, hands behind your back, in the dark and under water.] Then I loosened the screws and Libby could haul the motor up on deck.

Finally, we tried bailing the dinghy. It was no use. She sat so low in the water, tipping from side to side, that water ran in faster than we could bail. I dove again, and fastened a line to the stern cleats. Then we attached the halyard to that line and hauled the dinghy out of the water using the halyard winch. It's waterproof compartments were full of water. It had been ready to sink to the bottom.

Finally, I had to rescue the Honda outboard. After submergence, the motor can be rescued with no damage by getting the water out immediately. I removed the carburetor and cleaned out the water. I removed the spark plug, and pulled the cord several times. Then I changed the oil. Then I started it. The Honda 2HP is air cooled so I thought I could run it OK out of the water. It started, hooray!

I checked the oil. There was water in the oil. I changed it again. Then started the motor. I checked the oil again. Water again. I changed the oil for the third time. Finally, I decided to just let it run for a while, hoping that the heat would evaporate any remaining water. That was a mistake. It appeared that I melted some kind of plastic seal down around the propeller. Darn, another trip to the mechanic for that.

After all that, I let the motor run at idle speed for an hour. It has a centrifigul clutch so the propeller doesn't spin at idle speed.

All of this took about 3 hours. Did I mention that during all that time it rained continuously? Ay ay caramba, what a night.

But hey, what the heck. adventures like that give us stories to tell.

The looser in all this seems to be Tarwathie. She has a fist size gouge in the hull near the water line that exposes fiberglass under all the layers of paint and gel coat. I'll have to repair that soon.