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Tim may not have viewed the sinking of his boat as a public service, but in a way that's what it has become--a wakeup call that's helping many of us question the safety of our boats, and ask how we might be able to prevent future submersions.
Obviously, as Tim has said, he made a few mistakes that compounded, contributing to the sinking. But that's how these things tend to happen: a few oversights, a small error or two, unusual water conditions and POW, you're in trouble.
In no particular order, here are some of the thoughts I've been having on the subject:
* Most of our boats are already pretty safe, at least in the conditions in which we tend to take them out: decent weather and relatively calm water; splashwells on most of our cruisers and many of our runabouts that generally keep water out of the boat; not a lot of through-hull fittings that can fail, etc.
* Personally speaking, I don't think I'll ever again run a boat (except maybe in an event like the Slough Run, where you're asking for trouble anyway) that doesn't have a good splashwell. While Tim's boat obviously had a splashwell, the drain plugs were left in the box, allowing water-weight to build up inside the splashwell...probably pushing the stern down just enough that waves were able to wash over the inner transom, and into the cockpit area. Once water started flowing into the hull over the transom it accelerated into a cascade, sinking the boat within minutes. (So, if you have a splashwell, make sure it drains any water that gets into the splashwell area!)
* Foam, foam and more foam...or other types of floatation if you prefer. Tim's accident makes me laugh out loud at some of the folks who still argue--incredibly!--that floatation foam isn't a good idea. I know that many of the Anti-Foamers associate foam with the old, water-permeable junk that some boatbuilders jammed into bilges back in the 1950's, '60's and '70's, but the modern closed-cell foam products are just that: they do not absorb water, except in situations or small areas where the foam bubbles (cells) have been punctured or crushed, and in our boats that is probably not more than 1% of the foam mass under your cockpit floor or elsewhere in your hull. So, if you've been reluctant to embrace floatation foam, GET OVER IT! The stuff will support as astounding amount of weight, and if Tim had been fortunate enough to have foam under his entire cockpit floor (let alone elsewhere), his boat would never have gone to the bottom the way it did. (To give you an example of foam's ability to keep things afloat, the foam I poured under the cockpit floor of my old 17 Skagit express would have supported 2,200 pounds of weight--considerably more than the boat weighed. Of course, some of the boat was wood, too, which would have provide a bit of additional floatation...but the point is that if you can achieve positive buoyancy with a product that is so relatively simple to install, why not do it everywhere you can?)
* Tim's boat was side-tied to the dock with bow and stern lines--the standard procedure. When water poured into the cockpit area, the hull started to sink...but primarily on the side away from the dock. (In the photos I shot right after we got down to the dock, you can see that the boat is hanging on its side, suspended from the dock by the mooring lines. I would argue that if the boat had taken on water away from the dock, it might not have rolled over so sharply....and in fact it might have remained level, or fairly level. It "turned turtle" largely because it rotated the only way it could, with the dock lines acting as hinges as the hull started to sink.
* Personal lesson learned: In the future, I will recommend that we not only pour floatation foam under cockpit floors, but also in some additional chambers that are higher-up in the hull--just to make sure that our boats stay upright, as well as being prevented from sinking to the bottom. With a typical outboard boat that has a splashwell, there are two spots that are normally dead space that would make fantastic chambers for floatation foam: The otherwise empty, unused areas in the far back corners of the hull, outside of the splashwell boxes. (I know that many factory-built splashwells extend the full width of the hull, but it's completely unnecessary to have the splashwell floor going clear to the outside of the hull. No reason why, in restoring a boat, that we cannot reduce the width of the splashwell box to just beyond the vertical sides of the transom cutout...building in the outer corners a vertical plywood chamber that can be filled to the top with floatation foam. This would put a fair amount of floatation high up in the hull and right where you want it--at the transom, where your heavy outboard motor(s) are going to try hardest to scuttle the boat in following seas or docked situations like the one Tim faced with his Seafair Sedan.
* Another thought this evening is to stop throwing away those old fiberglass saddle tanks that can no longer be used to contain today's gasolines. They might not be any good for fuel, but if cleaned up they'd make terrific chambers to fill up with foam. (Heck, just keep the old deck-fill tubes and pour the foam straight in, then cap 'em off when the foam overflows onto the side decks. With 20 gallons of floatation foam on each side of your hull, joined by foam under the cockpit floor, your boat will NEVER go down....at least not very far down. You can either mount new fuel tanks ahead of, or aft of the old saddle tanks, or you can perhaps place a single fuel tank under the stern bench seat--or two fuel tanks in plywood boxes under your skipper-and-mate swivel seats. But filling the old tanks with foam might be more sensible than ripping them out and tossing the things...as long as you clean the old fuel out of the tanks before pouring any foam, since gasoline tends to eat foam.
So, that's about it for tonight....just a few thoughts that may be helpful as we continue to learn from Tim's unfortunate and surreal accident.
I'm sure others will have their own good ideas to contribute to the discussion, too...
- Marty
Obviously, as Tim has said, he made a few mistakes that compounded, contributing to the sinking. But that's how these things tend to happen: a few oversights, a small error or two, unusual water conditions and POW, you're in trouble.
In no particular order, here are some of the thoughts I've been having on the subject:
* Most of our boats are already pretty safe, at least in the conditions in which we tend to take them out: decent weather and relatively calm water; splashwells on most of our cruisers and many of our runabouts that generally keep water out of the boat; not a lot of through-hull fittings that can fail, etc.
* Personally speaking, I don't think I'll ever again run a boat (except maybe in an event like the Slough Run, where you're asking for trouble anyway) that doesn't have a good splashwell. While Tim's boat obviously had a splashwell, the drain plugs were left in the box, allowing water-weight to build up inside the splashwell...probably pushing the stern down just enough that waves were able to wash over the inner transom, and into the cockpit area. Once water started flowing into the hull over the transom it accelerated into a cascade, sinking the boat within minutes. (So, if you have a splashwell, make sure it drains any water that gets into the splashwell area!)
* Foam, foam and more foam...or other types of floatation if you prefer. Tim's accident makes me laugh out loud at some of the folks who still argue--incredibly!--that floatation foam isn't a good idea. I know that many of the Anti-Foamers associate foam with the old, water-permeable junk that some boatbuilders jammed into bilges back in the 1950's, '60's and '70's, but the modern closed-cell foam products are just that: they do not absorb water, except in situations or small areas where the foam bubbles (cells) have been punctured or crushed, and in our boats that is probably not more than 1% of the foam mass under your cockpit floor or elsewhere in your hull. So, if you've been reluctant to embrace floatation foam, GET OVER IT! The stuff will support as astounding amount of weight, and if Tim had been fortunate enough to have foam under his entire cockpit floor (let alone elsewhere), his boat would never have gone to the bottom the way it did. (To give you an example of foam's ability to keep things afloat, the foam I poured under the cockpit floor of my old 17 Skagit express would have supported 2,200 pounds of weight--considerably more than the boat weighed. Of course, some of the boat was wood, too, which would have provide a bit of additional floatation...but the point is that if you can achieve positive buoyancy with a product that is so relatively simple to install, why not do it everywhere you can?)
* Tim's boat was side-tied to the dock with bow and stern lines--the standard procedure. When water poured into the cockpit area, the hull started to sink...but primarily on the side away from the dock. (In the photos I shot right after we got down to the dock, you can see that the boat is hanging on its side, suspended from the dock by the mooring lines. I would argue that if the boat had taken on water away from the dock, it might not have rolled over so sharply....and in fact it might have remained level, or fairly level. It "turned turtle" largely because it rotated the only way it could, with the dock lines acting as hinges as the hull started to sink.
* Personal lesson learned: In the future, I will recommend that we not only pour floatation foam under cockpit floors, but also in some additional chambers that are higher-up in the hull--just to make sure that our boats stay upright, as well as being prevented from sinking to the bottom. With a typical outboard boat that has a splashwell, there are two spots that are normally dead space that would make fantastic chambers for floatation foam: The otherwise empty, unused areas in the far back corners of the hull, outside of the splashwell boxes. (I know that many factory-built splashwells extend the full width of the hull, but it's completely unnecessary to have the splashwell floor going clear to the outside of the hull. No reason why, in restoring a boat, that we cannot reduce the width of the splashwell box to just beyond the vertical sides of the transom cutout...building in the outer corners a vertical plywood chamber that can be filled to the top with floatation foam. This would put a fair amount of floatation high up in the hull and right where you want it--at the transom, where your heavy outboard motor(s) are going to try hardest to scuttle the boat in following seas or docked situations like the one Tim faced with his Seafair Sedan.
* Another thought this evening is to stop throwing away those old fiberglass saddle tanks that can no longer be used to contain today's gasolines. They might not be any good for fuel, but if cleaned up they'd make terrific chambers to fill up with foam. (Heck, just keep the old deck-fill tubes and pour the foam straight in, then cap 'em off when the foam overflows onto the side decks. With 20 gallons of floatation foam on each side of your hull, joined by foam under the cockpit floor, your boat will NEVER go down....at least not very far down. You can either mount new fuel tanks ahead of, or aft of the old saddle tanks, or you can perhaps place a single fuel tank under the stern bench seat--or two fuel tanks in plywood boxes under your skipper-and-mate swivel seats. But filling the old tanks with foam might be more sensible than ripping them out and tossing the things...as long as you clean the old fuel out of the tanks before pouring any foam, since gasoline tends to eat foam.
So, that's about it for tonight....just a few thoughts that may be helpful as we continue to learn from Tim's unfortunate and surreal accident.
I'm sure others will have their own good ideas to contribute to the discussion, too...
- Marty
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