Offshoreonly.com - BobtheBuilder Offshore Bedtime Story #8

This is the story of the sinking of my Formula 419. I am sure that some will be disappointed that there was no high seas drama involved , and just more stupidity on my part. LOL The story includes a pre amble as to how the boat got to it's place of sinking. It may be worth reading to avoid making the same mistakes I made, and could save you some grief and a lot of expense. Enjoy.

The Formula was a great boat that had brought me safely and comfortably to many places from Michigan to the Bahamas, as well as the Dry Tortugas and from one end of Florida to the other including numerous trips to Key West. When originally purchased, it was licensed as a Florida boat with home port naturally being Marco Island where I have a residence. While the winter months were spent in the south, most summers “No Fear” would get trailered to the Bridge Harbor Yacht Club at Port Huron, MI. Port Huron is only a 2 ½ hr drive from my home in Ontario so it was close enough that I could drive over, boat for the day and be back home that same evening or spend the weekend there.

Prior to the mid 1990's it was expensive to import a new boat into Canada with provincial and federal taxes amounting to 15% plus import duties. With the advent of free trade, the duty was gradually reduced to zero by year 2000. With “No Fear”, now being 4 years old and depreciated in value, I began giving thought to importing the boat into Canada. After several summers of boating from Macinaw Island, MI in the north to Put in Bay, OH in Lake Erie to the south, I needed some new waters to explore. What better than the beauty of Georgian Bay, ON which is conveniently close to my cottage in the Muskoka Lakes District of Ontario.

So it was set. I arranged to have “No Fear” trailered from Marco Island to Port Huron in June of 2000. After splashing it there, I then crossed the Detroit River to Sarnia Ontario, tied up at a local marina, and called Canada Customs advising them I was importing the boat. I had done my homework in advance and in an hour I was done, but $28,000.00 poorer after paying the taxes. Customs did not even come to the marina to see the boat which surprised me. It was a short taxi ride back to the marina and I was on my way heading north into the familiar waters of Lake Huron.

That afternoon I was able to get as far north as the port of Kincardine, ON. I remember sleeping on the boat in the harbor that night. The next morning it was back on the water again, stopping for lunch and fuel at the quaint port of Tobermorey on the tip of the Bruce Peninsula. From there I would cross 85 miles of Georgian Bay and make my way through a few of the 30,000 Islands to the Doral Marine Resort, formerly known as Wye Heritage Marina. Doral, with it's 500 + slips boasts to be one of the largest recreational marina's on the Great Lakes. On arrival, the sky's were darkening and it was clear that before long a thunderstorm would break out. The marina office issued me a slip but failed to mention that there was a lot of silt and sediment that had settled in the marina and it was badly in need of dredging. It was so bad, that I could not back half way into my slip and half the boat was sticking out into the channel! The answer as I saw it was to go in bow first. As I did that, I could feel the bow slide up on the soft mud some, but hey, I was in the slip! What I did not realize was that as the bow rose up, the stern dropped to the point where the bilge pump discharge was under water. With the storm about to dump on me at any moment, I hurriedly put the cover on. My shore power cord would not reach, but I was not all that worried about it as I knew (thought) I had a dry boat and would be returning from the cottage the next day. (Fatal mistake !) My son, Steve meet me at the marina with the car and off we went to the cottage for the evening.

The next morning I received a phone call from the Marina advising me that the back end of my boat was submerged under water almost to the top of the transom. The marina had offered to get a pump going to re float the boat. I allowed them to go ahead but to take pictures first for the insurance company. I was there in an hour and they had her floating and sitting in the slings at the travel lift. We lifted it out and set it in a cradle to be available for the insurance company to examine the next day. Close examination showed that the bilge discharge piping was extensively cracked and broken and was so brittle that it came apart in your hand. Once the batteries ran down from the pumps running so much, lake water flowed backward through the cracked and broken piping into the Formula's bilge. This likely went on overnight and eventually sank the back half of the boat that was not resting on the mud bottom.

Dealing with the Insurance Company: While they were pretty good about it and did not try to wiggle completely out of paying, I probably got stuck with a larger portion of the bill than I should have. Out of a $72,000.00 claim they paid $48K and I got stuck with $24 K. Of that amount, my deductible was $5 K and the balance because of “wear”. Tyler Crocket had done a complete rebuild on all three engines the year before so the engines probably had close to 250 hrs on them. Anyway I learned an expensive lesson that day. I now pay more attention to the condition of all the hoses and piping in the engine compartment and on subsequent boats when doing engine rebuilds find that is a good time to change out any cracked or worn hoses and hardware. It is something worth paying attention to. Also I am sure that hooking up the shore power has saved many a boat from a similar fate.

After that experience, I quickly lost interest in “No Fear”. I was able to sell her in Canada (with disclosure of the sinking, of coarse) later that summer and was then free to move on to my first 50 Vee Nor Tech ......... but that in itself is another story. LOL

As I was “thinking” about the “sinking” this short video clip came to mind. It's good for a laugh. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yR0lWICH3rY

Nite,

Bob