<-- The official ANTIGUA SAILING WEEK 1999 program contains this photo of my new boat PUMKIN leading a pack of racing boats. She's the little boat at the far right and became renowned as a "winning" boat at her first Sailing Week outing in 1998. I had talked to her owner, Tommy Paterson , about buying her several times but somehow he could never bring himself to part with her.
However, when the eye of
hurricane
Georges ran over Antigua in September 98 the little boat, a C
& C Trapper 27, was dashed against the shore at Seatons on
Antigua's north coast. When the storm had passed she was lodged in a
tree.... some 150 feet from water deep enough to refloat her. Because
of the inaccessible location the insurance company wrote her off and
so, apparently, did everyone else. I heard about the incident and
picked my way through rocks, trees and mangroves to take a look at
her
predicament.
I have to say that when a boat is stuck in a tree it's a very
opportune moment to get a deal on the purchase price! Considering
where she was laying I decided to encourage my old friend Doug Luery,
Chief Engineer at
Jumby
Bay, who's wife Gabby manages
Yepton's
Beach Resort, to join me in a partnership to salvage her. I dealt
with the fiberglass and aesthetic repairs and he worried about the
minor engineering issues.... like getting it back into the
water.
The first thing Doug did was to stand her up at the water's edge.
He leveled her using car jacks extended with lengths of greenheart.
The photo shows her nestled amongst the trees after she was righted.
The ground was very uneven and the sea washed against the keel at
high tide so Doug shored her up against the tree and stabilized her
with long legs bolted to the toe rail.
To complicate matters it was a Munchineel tree...
notoriously poisonous in the West Indies.
The side facing the sea was fine but the other side was pitted with small holes and a section of toe rail was ripped right out. No amount of scrappy photos could adequately represent the toil of weeks spent fiber-glassing, fairing, undercoating and antifouling her... so I haven't bothered to show them here, but finally the hull was ready to go back in the water. It was a strange experience since I wasn't 100% sure we could ever refloat her and both Doug and I secretly suspected that we were wasting both time and money..... but didn't mention it to the other.
We were pleased to discover that damage to the mast was superficial. Doug rebuilt her busted spreader fittings, restructured the internal support for the toe rail and straightened the safely lines and suddenly we were ready to launch.
We had various plans of how to get her back afloat that ranged from bringing in a marine crane to building a skid and we finally settled on a combination of two. Doug found a small crane that he thought could make it down the muddy shoreline and he built a skid to strap to her good side when she was laid down in the water. After three dates with the crane, it still hadn't shown up. On the fourth try the crane came.... but sank in the soft mangrove shoreline. So it was that we went into the road building business, hired a bulldozer and cut a short road through the embankment for the crane. Finally on Saturday the 6th Feb PUMKIN was lifted into the water..... 2 feet of water!
The crane lifted her over the rocks that she had previously pounded upon and about 50 feet out to the sea. In this photo she looks close to shore but it's deceiving and despite the acute angle the hull is actually floating. You can see Doug in the red shirt sitting on top of the boat contemplating what to do next. John who later became part of the PUMKIN crew is standing on the trashed dock with Ian a sailor friend who's help was enlisted due to his considerable experience of getting boats out of difficult situations.
We used a rope from the crane which we wrapped around the keel to lift the heaviest part of the boat while we shunted the floating hull out another 10 feet or so. Then using a yoke of lines from bow and stern attached to anchors in deep water we attempted to winch her out farther on the submerged skid. That was where our plan faltered. The sea bottom was made up of loose, broken, coral and weed. No matter how far Ian and I rowed out the anchors they failed to hold. For a while it looked like we were stuck tight.
We had minor success using the anchors to mount submerged blocks that allowed us to lead long lines back to the powerful winch on the crane but soon that proved too much for the anchor's holding power too.
The breakthrough came when the previous owner, Tommy, who have been an enthusiastic and very constructive contributor to the task, suggested that we attach the blocks to the end of the wracked jetty..... low down where the pilings sink into the sea bed. Although that didn't take the shortest rout into deep water we were able to run the lines back to the crane and quite quickly hauled her to the jetty end in about 4 feet of water.
