I'll first introduce you to my "credentials" in commenting on this...
While walking along to the slip of a friend's boat on which I was crewing, I noticed the transom of a new E24 in the marina and thought I would wonder over… Little did I know I was about to encounter an Endeavour that had been tortured and mutilated into this Horror.
is where the terror begins. What is that thing jammed onto the bow? Has someone converted an E24 into a small whaling boat? Like driving past a multi-car wreck on the freeway, I had to take a closer look.
(Side note: The headsail seen on the foredeck is actually a very expensive top-quality racing sail…or at least it once was. People in neighbouring pens state that it has been sitting like that on the foredeck for the last four years. Very bizarre.)
The first thing that came to light was that whatever this thing on the front of the boat was…it had undergone massive change and revision at the hands of a peculiar mind. Reinforcement plates had been welded and riveted to the inside of the angle-iron frame. Fairleads that may have had some purpose early on where now just hanging on like barnacles in places they could not achieve anything. To make it so much more special though, the entire frame was made of mild steel and had been painted (possibly dipped, or more accurately sculpted onto) with bituminous latex in a remarkable shade of baby-cack. Anyone that has retiled their own bathroom will be familiar with bituminous latex; it is the moisture barrier you paint onto the undersurface in preparation to tiling. It is not UV stable and tends to go runny. Our hero’s solution seems to be to have simply painted on some more over the top until a very organic and disturbing globbiness had been achieved on all surfaces.
(By the way, the little thing at the top of this picture seems to be a home made hawk (complete with its own coating of baby-cack latex. The fact that this is not clear of the wind distortion set up by the sails or, in fact, is not visible when the headsail is up seems to be irrelevant.
The dual bow-rollers at the base of this contraption seem to be a good idea, until you notice that they are made with welded in bits of tube instead of rollers and that the tube is about 18ga (would buckle with strong thumb/forefinger pressure). Since there is not the slightest mark on the latex that is painted on these, I do not think an anchor has ever come close to these.
Before leaving the bow of this aquatic Mad Max vehicle I should point out that what this thing seems to be for is a banana shaped bowsprit that has allowed him to place two extra forestays onto the boat in addition to the original forestay and the baby-stay further back.
The fact that these two stays are hanging slack and there are blocks and fairleads seemingly leading to nowhere managed to keep me awake for a couple of nights trying to puzzle it out. I have decided to quit that before I go mad(der).
The outermost of these extra stays, does have a downhaul…. but it only leads back to the foredeck…so you have to be standing right there to use it anyway. Utterly useless.
Lets move further back along this trainwreck…
This is the mast base…complete with pinrail and belaying pins…. ON A 24FOOTER?!?!?
Also note the HUGE mooring cleats that seem to be woodscrewed into the cabin-top. Yes that is a large crack next to the starboard one. I guess there was never any backing plate.
The “organic” nature of the boat continues with both the grime growing on the deck and the continued use of that bucket of baby-cack bituminous latex. Apparently it works on wood too!
The clever and stylish modification to the windows more or less speaks for itself. This belongs in Better Homes And Gardens…just not a frigging boat!
Notice the quality of application.
Say it with me people, Bituminous Latex….. Oooooh!
Not much to say about the mast except that it features sixteen stainless steel mast steps, all carefully fitted UPSIDE DOWN (the tread is visible on the “underside”) and seemingly attached to the mast with mild steel woodscrews. But what about corrosion, I hear you ask, Well fear not, the bottom third (more or less) has been splashed vigorously with that miracle product for happy boating…Bituminous Latex!
So, by this point there really isn’t a lot of E24 left. How much worse could it get? Well, please allow me to introduce you to the steering system…
Yes…it gets worse.
Please note the powerboat compass on the port side. It is completely impossible to use accurately while using the “wheel” on the starboard side. Did I mention that bituminous latex seems to stick to timber?
And as we approach the end of this horror show…here is the elegant and functional steering box that sits atop the rudderpost. Yes that is a very expensive Lumar self-tailing winch. I have absolutely no idea what it is doing there. It does not go to a furler or a sheet or indeed anything else. It just has a coil of rope that doesn’t do anything. It is a single winch (not part of a pair).
The elevated mainsheet traveller is kind of bulky (and latex covered, of course) but is understandable and practical in comparison to most everything else done to this poor boat.
Just a shot of the cockpit in all its splattered glory. I particularly like the non-slip safe flooring rubber that is laying around in chunks you can trip over.
And to conclude the tour…
No, you are not seeing triple. This boat really does have three backstays, all mounted within inches of each other. Only the centre one is on a proper chainplate. On of the stays has an insulator for a HF ariel mounted at the bottom, but not at the top. The other clutter is a whip 27meg ariel and a HF ariel all mounted to the back deck in a swiss-cheese sort of arrangement.
There are two fishing rod tubes welded to the pushpit rail…but there is no way to reach them past all this stuff.
Note also the huge stainless fairleads and mooring cleats.
The not unattractive blue used on hatch covers, by the way, is another brand (and thus colour) of bituminous latex. This guy didn’t just have a ten litre bucket of the stuff he wanted to use up…he did this with planning and malice aforethought.
The solar panel is overshaded by nearly everything.
I wandered away from this boat a saddened man, my friends. This is obviously what happens to unwary Endeavours that fall into bad company. I am tempted to set up a fund and buy it from this owner and then rehabilitate it into a real boat once more.
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As to what you can do about it....
Talk to the marina management and ask them to get in touch with the boat's actual owner. Get them to relaise that they now have a formal compaint of an unsafe and unseaworthy boat being in the marina and a potential danger to other residents.
make it formal and make it in writing.
They will act on it. They will likely find him a slip to move to that is more "out of the way" for now, and they will likely get in touch with the owner and explain that something will need to be done within X amount of time.
Think about it this way, when was the last time the kid seriously inspected and replaced his mooring lines? Reinforced them in bad weather? How long till he decides he does not like them and replaces them with 15pound fishing line too?
he does not need to catch fire, he just needs to go drifting unpowered through the marina... bumpty bump debump.
he does actually use proper facilites for draining his toilet's holding tank, deosn't he? If so, how does he get the boat around to the station? If not...you do not want to be near that!
Cheers.
Sasha
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