an old boat and enthusiastic new owner
On Apr 7, 1:36 am, (Richard Casady) wrote:
On Sun, 6 Apr 2008 19:44:31 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:
On Apr 6, 10:31 pm, (Richard Casady)
wrote:
On Sat, 5 Apr 2008 19:55:02 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:
What would you tell this guy?
Insure and scuttle. Or just scuttle.
Casady
I have never had a marina around here (N. FL) ask about insurance.
The story actually got worse when I looked at the mainsail. HOWEVER,
I believe she will never leave the dock again. From what he told me,
he (the new owner) is more interested in partying at the marina than
sailing. When he looks into any of the costs, he will give it up. He
could recoup his costs by selling the "working" diesel
He could give it to the Boy Scouts and take a tax writeoff. A scout
troop could provide the labor for a minimum fixup. They could use it
as a daysailor.
Casady
He pulled back the sail cover from the sail leech and said "I just
need to stitch it up a little". The leech where it had been folded
over the leach line was so rotten that the material had torn all the
way up the leech so the leech line was flapping free. All the running
rigging was so frayed that they all had broken braided shells with the
interiors fraying so they wouldnt pass through any blocks. The teak
anchor roller was so rotten that it was split and was actually falling
off the bow. The really cheapo undersized aluminum cleats all had at
least one horn broken. Tom had told me that during hurricane Dennis
he'd lost power and because his stuffing box actually runs a constant
stream that she had filled halfway with water and on the inside there
was a water mark halfway up the flimsy hardware store fake wooden
pannelling.
The new owner was "living aboard" but had seen no bad weather on her.
Immediately after this, I was having lunch with some friends in a
nearby house when we got this crazy Spring storm with 60 kt winds
from the south bringing the water up higher than I have seen it except
in a hurricane and tearing the roof off a nearby mobile home. We
looked outside to see lawn furniture flying past 20' up. Later when I
walked past the boat the owner was nowhere in sight and I figure he
decided that living aboard in such weather was a bad idea.
Fortunately, I doubt this boat will ever leave the dock under her own
power because her prop is probably corroded to the point of
uselessness beneath a huge ball of oysters. Her rigging cannot even
be used to hoist the sail and I think the sail would immediately rip
apart if he tried to hoist it.
Insurance is not an issue because he probably paid less than a couple
thousand dollars cash for her. The most likely scenario is that she
will sink at the dock in one of our frequent summer storms when we
lose power for a few hours. I believe the owner has few assetts so
when he gets sued for the cleanup, who will pay?
I wish I had the courage to tell him that his best bet is to simply
haul her using the nearby crane and have the nearby backhoe crush her
into parts small enough to haul to the dump and then sell the possibly
salvageable engine to defray the dumping cost.
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