Shipwreck

I kid you not.

Coming home from another nice weekend of shooting, cigars, sippin' fine bourbon, and um, other activities, I arrived back to the New Dawn ready to face another week at the hellish salt mine at which I'm employed.

Upon opening the companionay hatch, the sight that greeted me was a shocker.

Almost every object from the Port side of the boat was on the cabin sole. The coffepot's carafe was in shards, the butcher's block of knives were scattered about, and there was papers, spices from the galley and just all manner of detrious strewn from stem to stern.

I'm typing this as I take a break from the cleanup.

For the life of me, I cannot understand just what caused this mess. It's as if the boat had taken a deep, hard heel to starboard while out at sea, but with the cabin being completely unsecured for being underway. Yet, I'm tied to the docks with no less than eight docklines, all perfectly adjusted to accomodate up to a five foot tidal cycle.

Twice a year, a phenomenon occurs which may be a potential culprit, but I'll have to reasearch it a bit to see if it happned over the weekend.

It's called an Astronomical Low Tide. In this marina, that would mean an extra two-foot tidal fall, on top of the five foot allowance I have the lines set for. Such a tidal fall would mean only about one foot of water under my boat....and she needs four feet in which to float. If so, that could explain this mess.

Either that, or the cats are plotting mutiny.

UPDATE: 21:25 hrs.

Having visited with my neighbor John aboard his 44' ketch, I can confirm that it was indeed, an abnormally low tide at fault. The same Norther that gave Dallas and Austin a snowfall blew about 3' of water out of Galveston Bay and out into the open Gulf of Mexico.

Combine that with the standard low tide as charted on the tide tables, and I ended up with less than a foot of water under the HULL. The keel was stuck two feet down into the mud itself. John said the New Dawn was resting at about a 45 degree angle yesterday morning.

Wouldn't have done me any good to have the cats walk the plank from that situation...they'd have been able to just walk ashore.

Comments

[Beth]

It's the cats. I'd put money on it (if I was a betting person). Cats do all sorts of evil. At least that's what my dogs tell me. :-)

[Emperor Misha I]

They're Evil, EEEEEVIL I tell you!

Sorry to hear about the mess, Jim, and I hope that it isn't quite as bad as it sounds.

[Rivrdog]

Cap'n Rivrdog here, the Nattering Nabob of Nautical Nuttiness.

According to NOAA's Tides Online at http://tidesonline.nos.noaa.gov/geographic.html

you had a minus tide of about -1.95 feet yesterday at about 0500 (Freeport tide datum). Around here, that would put a buncha sailboats on their beam-ends (power trawlers too, and my boat would have muddied it's props, a FUBAR similar to shitting in one's messkit).

Should be easy to check out: go around to some of the other sailboats and see if they suffered like damages, and talk to anyone who might have been there.

My guess though, is wake damage. Some dumbass stinkpotter probably rolled a 5-foot wake into New Dawn. It IS curious that only the gewgaws on one side of your ship fell down, though, that is evidence of a heeling. Were the gewgaws on the opposite side all bunched up next to the hull?

You need to do a few safety checks. Check for evidence of your dock lines having been overstressed, as well as the deck hardware they are attached to. Check the fenders and fender whips to see if there is any evidence of huge pulls on them, and lastly check the hull for damage from contacting the dock. Oh, don't forget to pull your bilge hatch and eyeball the keel bolts to make sure they are undamaged, too.

I am a state-certified (OR) boat accident reconstructionist, so if you have damage, and can't convince your ins. co that it was caused by this phenomena, then give me a shout and I may just have to fly down there and investigate and write it up for you.

[Valerie]

Oh, people, people it wasn't the cats! Not nearly enough destruction. And he made no mention of cat barf. Which there would have been from them feasting on the fruits of their labor.

[dragonfly jenny]

Oh man, so sorry to hear about this! Hope there's no serious damage.

[Key]

Wow. Your home at a 45 degree angle huh?

(I didn't get half the nautical jargon in your most recent post, but I got that...)

I'm willing to bet that your cats were bouncing on any object that would hold still and screeching to the top of their lungs.

[Denita TwoDragons]

DAMN, Jim! I tear myself away from the keyboard for a few days and all hell breaks out across the Blogosphere!

I'm sorry to hear the New Dawn decided to take a little lean, but I'm glad that the vessel is only messy on the inside and not in worse shape!

--TwoDragons