October 13, 2020
Boat was tied to mooring ball in anchorage (https://goo.gl/maps/jb8gAy6n9y4gDj6h6) where we keep it when we’re at our cabin on Eliza Island. We had two bow lines to mooring ball with chafing gear on both lines, had rowed out and tidied up the boat the day before and checked everything.
Forecast winds were supposed to be in high teens with gusts in low twenties. Predicted direction was out of SW. Winds in the anchorage were much higher than forecast… weather station at airport in Bellingham caught gusts of 50+ knots twice. From the SW was accurate and that’s a nasty angle for where our mooring ball is as it creates quite a bit of fetch. From the porch of our cabin I shot some video right before the boat went loose, you can see the spray flying off the water:
(For those who question shooting video instead of looking after boat, at this point it was way too rough to go out and actually do anything for the boat)
At 12:21PM Eliza Island caretaker called and said he could see our boat adrift between Eliza and Portage Islands
Called Coast Guard (12:25PM) and TowBoatUS (12:33PM). TowBoat was sent from Anacortes, progress was slow due to high winds and adverse currents. Our boat could be seen heading generally north up the Hale Passage and then trending west until it struck Lummi Island just north of Inati Bay… this was totally random and must have been influenced by the currents because the wind direction would have been expected to push the boat NE into Portage Bay. Boat could be seen bouncing against the shore and stayed in one place for 15-20 minutes (this was particularly horrible, we had our spotting scope and you could see the mast vibrating with each bounce… yeesh). While we were on phone calls and gathering foul weather gear both ourselves and the caretaker lost sight of the boat. Based on where she ended up I think this is more or less the path she took:
TowBoatUS arrived on scene ~3:15PM and searched for boat. TowBoatUS located boat in Inati Bay and took her under tow. No real way to describe how I felt when another island resident (looking through binoculars) said “they’ve got her, they’ve got her” as TowBoatUS reappeared out of Inati towing Boundary by the mast (no bow cleats). Weather had moderated a touch, an islander with a solid powerboat took me to TowBoatUS boat and then I got on Boundary. I inspected boat, found no sign of significant water ingress. Tested motor, tested rudder, tested drive shaft while still attached to TowBoatUS with no issues noted. Cast off of TowBoatUS @ ~16:35 and motored boat under her own power to her slip at Squallicum Harbor. Spent one sleepless night on board then slithered over to Seaview North to get hauled first thing in the morning.
She took a solid beating on the rocks, no question, but as the yard owner said “she’s built like a brick shithouse” and so survived and stayed afloat.
Damage of note:
* Bow cleats x 2 gone: all four bolts, two on each side, were sheared off flush with the deck
* starboard stanchions x 4 bent inward, bedding shot
* stern pushpit one bent bar
* starboard jib sheet (Lewmar 40 only ~3 years old) winch damaged
* hull numerous smaller dings in the gelcoat, primarily on starboard side
* starboard wooden trim rail significantly damaged
* starboard portlights damaged
* wood on starboard cockpit coaming damaged
* pilothouse roof one small section of fiberglass damage
* hull damage above waterline on both starboard and port sides
* hull damage below waterline
* damage to bronze rudder foot and zinc mount on rudder foot
* possible rudder damage
Topside damage:
Hull damage above waterline:
Hull damage below waterline:
Hull damage below waterline:
Our insurance company was Traveler’s. They were painfully slow to work with. But they paid for a damage assessment and had the boat inspected by someone I chose. Then Seaview North put an estimate together to fix everything. The estimate was higher than the agreed value of the boat (even though the agreed value was pretty good for a boat that age). They “totalled” the boat, calling it a Total Constructive Loss. Choice was take one payoff and they get the boat (we have a few days to drive over and get all our personal stuff off it), second choice was a smaller payoff and we keep the boat. Talked to the yard and they said if we skipped the dings in the two pulpits (the stainless work to repair those two, alone, was almost $20k) they thought we could do it for the lower “you keep the boat” amount.
The logical choice was easy… take the high payout, find another Gulf 32 (we still love these boats) or consider a small powerboat for now for trips back and forth to Eliza. But there’s no logic in boats, if we were logical we would never have bought a boat!! So we took the smaller payout and had Seaview North do the work, and they did really spectacular work. Almost everything was fixed except we need to do some lifeline work (going to go with Dyneema and do it ourselves) and she looks almost the same as before, and we kept her out of the scrap yard, and damnit she’s our boat and we kept her!
She came out of the yard just after New Years (her mast was dropped and the work was done indoors at Seaview Fairhaven). A 2 day trip to fly over, inspect the hull, get her mast restepped and get her back in the slip and she looks like, well, she did.
Hull below waterline after repair:
Topside repairs:
Starboard stanchions repair:
All in all could have been worse in so many ways. I would have expected her to go NE into Portage Bay where she probably would have been blown ashore on a lee shore… Portage is pretty soft so she might have had a soft muddy landing but she would have been knocked on her side and driven further onto shore and flooded for sure causing I would guess way more damage than what happened on the rocks.
I hope to never go through something like this again, but it did at least validate all the gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair when we were deciding on what boat to buy. I firmly believe a more modern fin keel, spade rudder style boat that wasn’t as heavily designed and built would have sunk (easy scenario of busted prop shaft, flood, sink). By virtue of being a heavily built boat, with a supported rudder, protected prop, and full keel completed encapsulated in fiberglass (not bolted on) she survived.
Remains to be seen how getting new insurance will go…