SinkCraft 20CC sinks!

ocuyler · #1 10-11-2006, 02:38 PM

Well, almost, anyway. Tom and I decided to take a last blast on Lake Ontario Tuesday, so we launched at local town ramp I have never used. There we 2's and 3' breaking on the inlet, but no problem - it's a SeaCraft. We launched and while Tom was parking the truck, I ran the little inlet slowly, carefully picking my line in the un-marked channel. The 20 took the little breakers nicely so I turned around between swells and picked up Tom at the dock. Out we went again on the same line, except this time, we took a big breaker in the shallowest part of the channel and the motor dropped so low she clunked a basketball size rock and the motor stalled.

The motor did not restart after clunking hard again on the next swell. In less than a minute, the 20 MPH winds had the boat bow first against the low rock breakwall. Our attempts to raise the motor failed and now she was grinding skeg on rocks and tipping the boat. In the waist deep water we go (55 degrees). We decided to wedge the boat between some flat rocks to prevent dammage from the hull pounding. The motor dug it's way in about 6" down into baseball sized rocks. So now that we're that were stabilized, we tried to get the motor up. Standing at the transom the "little" 3' breakers were hitting us about neck high and starting to fill the boat. Within 5 minutes, the water worked it's way into the bilge (the scuppers worked OK) and overwhelmed the brand new Rule 500 GPM automatic pump and quickly the electrical system shorted. So she settled in nicely with about 2000 pounds of water weighing it down. It got dark and we were mildly hypothermic (not really, but it seemed like it, so we left the boat for the night.

The wind shifted overnight to our favor and we got back to the boat at 6:15 AM. The waves had layed down to 1' and we were able to de-water the boat with my little 4 HP Honda water pump (highly reccomended) and got it floating again. With 2 x 4's, Tom lifted the stern with each wave and we were able to work it out into deeper water and walk it back to the launch along the shore. Recovered!

Assessing the damage, we found that the prop was trashed, but the skeg intact. We found less than 10 gel coat chips the size of a quarter or smaller.

Morals of the story: 1> Don't hit rocks. 2> Wear your PFD.
3> If you wanted to paint the hull of your boat, but couldn't justify it - just slam it on some rocks for a few hours and now you have a reason. 4> That splashwell enclosure is starting to look pretty good...

NoBones · #2 10-11-2006, 03:20 PM

Man O man, glad you guys are OK, other than the old girl
gettin' beat-up

Sounds like our Matanzas Inlet north of Daytona by Marineland. You have to do three hail Mary's, and tighten up the Sphincter to go out or in!

See ya, Ken [image]

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ocuyler · #3 10-11-2006, 04:22 PM

Quote:

Sounds like our Matanzas Inlet north of Daytona by Marineland. You have to do three hail Mary's, and tighten up the Sphincter to go out or in!

No kidding! Oh, yea, I also learned what power trim was invented for...

Miles Offshore · #4 10-11-2006, 07:34 PM

Screw the boat- glad to hear you guys are all right Otto!!!! (besides you have plenty more where that came from right?)

strick · #5 10-12-2006, 12:21 AM

Glad you guys are OK Otto. Get that stern closed up.

strick

FELLOW-SHIP · #6 10-11-2006, 04:02 PM

Ha Otto;

Wow, sorry you had some bad times on the water. Things can go bad and go bad fast on the water glad to here you guys are OK.
At least you have 3 Back up boats when one goes down.

FellowShip

_______________________________________________

My motto: Just for the Grins

dcobbett · #7 10-12-2006, 09:41 AM

FourBoatTheory,

Sorry you had such a bad time of it. At least no one got hurt, or worse.

At the risk of appearing crass or rude, I'm in the process of redoing a 20 right now, and wondered if you would agree to answer some "lessons learned" type questions regarding what happened in your situation?

How did the water get into the bilge; through the tops of the seats in the stern quarters, rigging holes in the splashwell, the live well, the boot for the rigging tube under the console (I assume the entire deck was flooded to some degree)?

Why did the electrical system short? Where are the battery's located, did they get flooded, did the cables run to connection blocks in the bilge (that got flooded)?

rockdoc · #8 10-12-2006, 10:09 AM

Glad you're OK, Otto. Glad the old boat's OK too! Rocks and seawall and all, still lucky you were right at the shore and could walk away. Inlets are scary, especially inlets you don't know!

The first thought I had was bigger bilge pump. In the situation you were in it probably wouldn't have helped, although it might have bought you more time to get the boat off the rocks and out of the surf. I'm trying to figure out what to put into the '65 bowrider (no scuppers!), and I'm looking at 800 gph, probably one auto and one manual. Or an auto 500 and a manual 800, the 800 for a SHTF (S**T HITS THE FAN) scenario.

Second, I just bought a (long overdue purchase) inflating PFD, so it's on all the time from when I get out of the car to launch, till I'm back in the car after the trip. Big peace of mind.

rockdoc

Jon G · #9 10-12-2006, 11:13 AM

Yikes!!!

glad you guys are all right and you still got the boat. I have a fear of bilge water so I have two 2000gph pumps(wired seperatly), one pumping out each side of the boat with 1 1/8" hose and a 750gph automatic that dumps into the splashwell to let me know that theres something going on in the bilge. I hope I never need them but the more the merrier. Old Seacrafts sure can take a licking and keep in ticking! Glad you guys were near shore and are ok

edloh · #10 10-12-2006, 11:12 PM

otto,

glad you are fine. as mention earlier, the lesson learn here is seal all hatches, 2 bilge pump, etc. i would also advocate putting foam in the bilge. that is what i would further add to my 23' seacraft.