That launch day sinking feeling
Hop aboard... but don’t forget your snorkel!
All plastic boat owners, including owners of Sailfish 18s such as myself, are callous, soulless heathens who enjoy nothing more than watching wooden boats sink. As I’m also a wooden boat owner, with soul, depth, character and taste, I find it unamusing, and must point out that the technical terminology for what you Tupperware types call ‘sinking’ is in fact ‘launching’.
Snipe of Maldon, my 3½-ton Blackwater Sloop, had been out of the water, being varnished and painted in the very boat shed where she was built back in 1953. How romantic is that–not that you plastic plebs would get that! The whole process took five months: six weeks choosing the right varnish; another six choosing the paint; and two weeks to do the work. I know that doesn’t add up, but choosing the right brush is trickier than you’d think, as we wooden boat owners are pernickety and unicorn hair is in short supply these days. And boy, did she look pretty, with subtle cream topsides over red antifouling, as she swung perilously above me in the strops of the ancient RustonBucyrus crane with a slipping clutch.
As Snipe was lowered jerkily over the quayside, boatyard boss and shipwright Adi told me to hop aboard, and as my pride and joy returned to her element I felt quite emotional, and even more so a moment later when I screamed to Adi “she’s sinking,” while all the plastic boat rubber neckers fell about laughing. Next thing, Adi cast me adrift –with no engine, no electricity to run the electric bilge pump and not even an oar. His son, Sam, however, was on the other end of two long warps, and as Snipe settled lower and her floorboards started to float, he hauled her into her mud berth. It’s the most terrifying voyage I’ve ever undertaken, and it was only 100 yards. We made it… just.
The thing with wooden boats is that their planks and seams open up if left out of the water too long, and mine was about as watertight as a Venetian blind. This is all ‘normal’ apparently, so much so that Adi, casual as you like, sauntered along the pontoon, stopping to give boat owners the odd estimate and quote, before passing down a generator-powered shore pump. Then he said: “You’ll have a long night, but she’ll be tight in three tides.”
As the pump gurgled and chugged it just about kept pace with the inrush spurting through the seams, and with the ebb, as Snipe took to the mud, the water inside was eventually drained, but not as drained as I was. I went home for a few hours respite and returned with thermos, thermals and sleeping bag and noted with horror that the shore pump was gone. I plugged Snipe’s rudimentary electrics into the shore power and sat there with nothing more than a bucket, head-torch, hand pump and hope.
It was a chill April night with a mocking moon that illuminated the menacing water creeping over the glistening mud to envelop me in my wooden sieve. As I huddled down below, the mahoganyslatted cabin sides took on all the cosiness of a coffin. Then the gurgling began again as my two electric bilge pumps kicked in. Every few minutes I worked the hand pump too. And Snipe shivered as she lifted sluggishly, fighting for life. It was a time beyond time.
Pump down the volume
Whether it was seconds or minutes, I don’t know, but I sensed that the intervals between the bursts of the bilge pump were longer, my turns at the hand pump fewer and farther between. Then I awoke –I didn’t know I’d been asleep–but I was roused by the distant sounds of rhythmic occasional whirrings and sploshes of the pumps on nearby wooden boats, but not mine. I panicked. Had my pumps packed up? But no, a brief but urgent burst came from my bilge. As Snipe settled back on her soft and welcoming pillow of mud on the falling tide I couldn’t bring myself to leave her. We rested together after our endeavours, my snoring more regular than the occasional snort of the bilge pumps. Then a knock on the cabin roof awoke me. “You there, Dave?” said Adi. I poked my head out, saw we were afloat, and went below to flick the manual bilge switch, which gave the shortest gargle and then sucked air.
“I told you she’d take up in three tides,” said Adi, the wood whisperer. Of course, you lot, being mostly plastic boat owners, wouldn’t understand how magical and spiritual it is to return a living thing back to its element and nurse it back to life.
‘As Snipe took to the mud, the water inside was finally drained, but not as drained as I was’