My Wahoo!

Sometime around Christmas the vessel pictured below broke loose from its mooring in Lynn Harbor and washed ashore near the Nahant rotary. For the first few weeks it was a curiousity. I assume other passers by expected, like I did, that the owner would be there in short order to get his boat. But time went by and there it sat. With each passing week it settled a little lower in the sand.

I’ve been told that in most US states the law is that any vessel run aground and abandoned by its owner, even if just for a short time, can be claimed by anyone with an aim to do so. Even if this is correct in practice it’s probably not that easy. There must be papers to file and legal hoops to jump through. This is, after all, America. In this particular case I suspect that the owner actually abandoned the boat even before it broke its mooring, as there’s been no attempt to retrieve it and from the day it washed up it had a look of neglect.

I stopped off to take a closer look at it a few times. And apparently I wasn’t the only one. Because even if no one is interested in the hull, for sure bit by bit scavengers have removed pieces of it: the anchor and lines; compass; deck hardware; life vests; ring buoys.  It’s reached the point where there’s not much salvageable left outside of some minor hardware.  I scraped some sand away and discovered Doel Fins on the motor. Just so happens I was planning on fitting my Wahoo! with Doel Fins this year.

Launched the boat today for the first time since pulling it out of the water for engine repairs four weeks ago (a story in itself for another time). I launched from the Nahant Town Wharf intending simply to test out the engine after the repairs and then dock at my slip at the Point of Pines Yacht Club two miles away. Wind was moderate out of the southeast and, as the tide was low and there are some rock piles along that route, I kept my speed down and my eye on the depth finder. After rounding Bass Point I headed out towards open water. The finder was showing a steady seven feet so I opened her up a little and suddenly BAM!!!! The whole boat shuddered and stopped. I didn’t know what happened…thought maybe a couple of the engine mount bolts failed–that’s how severe the shock was. But looking down over the side I saw right away I’d run onto a rock pile and had struck a large rock. I was in two to three feet of water but the depth finder still read seven feet. Killed the engine, titled it up, and sat there a little dumbfounded as the wind and current pushed me away from the rocks, feeling very sheepish and wondering just how badly I’d injured myself.

As it turned out, the answer was bad but not as bad as it could have been. The edges of all three blades on the prop were dinged pretty good (but the blades themselves were not bent). The prop will need re-machining. But had I been going a little faster I could easily have taken out the lower unit. After drifting awhile I restarted the engine and gingerly put it into gear. I completed an hour of practice runs during which I confirmed that the depth finder is malfunctioning; it will read OK for a bit but then lock on a particular depth reading and stay on it until something causes it to start working again.

Later, docked safely at the Pines I told the story to Raybo (Ray M.) who’s been following my boat, ahem, issues, for the past year. “Damn Mike,” he says. “If it wasn’t for bad luck you wouldn’t have any luck at all.” Fishing tomorrow with Ben.