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On teling someone that the boat they had just purchased sight unseen through the 'net was "not as bad as all that" after he had had a very disappointing first impression.
On the ride out in my dinghy I commented favourably about the lines, the way that the make of boat was almost never prone to osmosis and was solidly and well built in both hull and deck, about the fact that the mast and boom seemed okay, even if we found that the standing rigging would need replacing, etc...
I was really doing my best, because this thing was a heart-sinking dog to look upon. Streaks of who knows what running down the hull from every scupper in the rotted-to-heck wooden toe-rails, windows that looked like whited-out cataracts fromt he sun fading and crazing that would mean that you could inadvertently push your finger straight through them....This thing was a bit dire!
Anyway, we tight the dinghy painter to a cracked and crooked staunchion (there were not enough horn cleats on deck) and clamber aboard. I spend 45 minutes doing a boat check. All the halyards, tracks, what could jokingly be reffered to as winches and other fittings. We bail out the bilges as step one so that the last thing on the check can be seeing how much water has seeped back in. Anyway...I lead him through a pretty thorough check-list of his new vessel and point out all the good stuff as well as stuff that needs replacing (with notes on where to get the bits cheap and a sort of ball-park price list). He begins to look a little less glum, and the possibility of sailing this mooring-minder across the BAY to his marina begin to seem possible (as long as the dinghy stays with us as an emergency escape!!!).
At last we get to the little 5hp outboard hanging off the transom. Oh dear. To short a shaft, too small a prop, and my doubts of getting this thing started are not aided by the fact that the lift-latches for the coling are both brocken so that you need to get under the stubs with a screw driver and then grab with a pair of pliers to lift them and open the motor.
The internals looks surprisingly good....But it does not start. Oh well, we can sail off the mooring and I know the detination marina enough to know we can either sail in, sail in and nudge for detail using the dinghy, or give a yell on the radio once we are in the area and see if someone wants to come out and lend a hand.
Not much water has seeped into the bilges since we bailed....
Check time available, plenty of daylight.
Winds, still light and useful (10-12kt), and lookign to stay that way.
"Okay, we go."
I watch him smile with a new and fragile confidence in his boat. We make things ready, The launch off the mooring has to be fairly no-nonsense as there is a sand bar not far behind us, so getting out of irons and moving is pretty critical.
The main (sorry, miserable remains of a main) is hoisted and I tell him to go forwards and throw off the mooring line when I tell him. He hears the first part.
I am just getting last minute things sorted like trimming the main sheet so that we can get moving as soon as the line is thrown when I feel the boat's motion change. I look up to see he has thrown off the line and is coming back to the cockpit. Oh well, don't make a huge fuss. Just get on with it....
I finish trimming the main to something liek what I think it will need to be when I bring the nose of the now backward-travelling boat around and step over to the tiller. I take it in hand, push to starboard....and have it snap off in my hand, leaving about a half inch stubb sticking out of the tiller stock.
I am holding the broken tiller and looking at it a bit stupidly, and then look up to see the guy who had just conjured confidence in hsi new boat looking a little pale and uncertain.
"What we need now, and I mean really now, is a big shifter or pipe wrench" I say.
"I have a leatherman here" he replies, not very optimistically.
And we feel the first thud of the keel into the sand bar.
We eventually used the dinghy to kedge out the anchor, and then to use the anchor rode to tie onto the mooring loop, and gradually worked the boat back onto its mooring...But that was about six hours of work including waiting for the tide to change.
We eventually moved his boat two weeks later, but his heart was no longer in it and he got rid of it.
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