A Tale of Two Chemists: The “grounding”

The “grounding”

It was July 31^st, 2015 that we lasted posted on our blog. Why haven’t we been posting and what have we been up to? Over the next two or three blogs we’ll try and bring you up to date.

For three magical days in the beginning of August 2015 I joined my family in Malcesine, on the shores of Lake Garda, for the wedding of my niece Suzanne and her husband Mark. It was a fabulous time, but over too quickly, and Gloria and I were soon back up at Sebasco Harbor to continue our busy charter schedule. By August 13^th we had completed 49 trips on Cotinga and I had captained a further ~75 tours on the Ruth, Sebasco resort’s wooden power boat. As you can imagine it was a fairly hectic schedule and we would be fortunate had we called it a day at that point. However, on August 14^th we took out our 50^th trip of the season and hit a rock. It was gusty afternoon and we had 6 guests aboard, including our two close friends Lynn and Lee. We had been sailing for an hour or so when we headed in to Small Point harbor, where there is a ledge in the middle of the Bay that is marked by a can. It appeared on our chart (paper and electronic) to have a minimum depth of 11 feet and we have a draft of a little less than 6 feet. We were short-tacking our way up the bay into the wind and reached a point where we needed to either turn again to avoid the ledge completely or bear-off to deeper water. Unfortunately, I made the decision to bear-off to where I thought the water was deeper (17 feet) and “bang”, the keel hit a rock at about 6 knots and stopped the boat in it’s tracks. It was a horrific experience, I think everyone was deeply shocked. We started the motor, took down the sails and headed back to the resort.

Initial inspection revealed that we had some water seeping into the bilge and there was some evidence of damage to panels inside the boat. Without knowing the extent of the damage we decided to cancel the final ten days of our chartering season and took Cotinga around the bay to Great Island Boat Yard (GIBY) to haul out and do assess the situation. Once on dry land we could see a melon-sized ding to the lower forward edge of keel, but also compression damage to fiberglass / wood panels inside the boat, caused by the momentum being forced upwards on impact. We decided to leave the boat on land at GIBY, complete a full evaluation with the help of marine surveyors and make necessary repairs over the winter. We were fortunate to end up at Great Island Boatyard. They did a terrific job, in conjunction with Gene Barnes (our surveyor) and Steven Charette (insurance surveyor), to identify and repair the damage. This involved amongst other things, removing the engine and main fuel tank to access the keel bolts and lower part of the hull, partially dropping and re-bedding the keel ballast, repairing some cracks in panels / tabbing and also in the deck where a post had been driven upwards by the impact. However, by the spring of 2016 Cotinga was back to her former glory.

They say there are only two types of sailors, those that have run aground and those that have yet to run aground. Nonetheless, I felt really bad for having caused this accident. The fact that the rock wasn’t clearly marked on our charts is not an adequate excuse, I ignored the navigational buoy and exercised poor judgement, over-interpreting the information we had available. Since then, we have been determined to try and re-build our confidence and not join that third group of sailors, those that prop up the bar and never leave the dock!

When we reflect on working at Sebasco Harbor we think about all the wonderful people we met, both the staff at the resort and our customers. It was a fantastic experience, hectic at times, but very rewarding at the personal level. Running a charter sailing business was also surprisingly stressful, constantly having to worry about the weather, the comfort and safety of guests and avoiding rocks, not to mention the 3 million lobster pots on the coast of Maine. It’s not exactly relaxing sailing! When we experienced the “grounding”, as it is referred to in nautical terms, it also made us realize how much capital we were putting at risk in running the business, and so we decided that we might be better to limit our future sailing to pleasure and try and earn some income in other ways.

In the next blogs we’ll fill you in on what we’ve been up to the past couple of years in terms of work and sailing

Mike