Jan 18 2009
Tis the season
The Repair season that is. As usual Limpet has a list of issues longer than January in Juneau. Owning a classic yacht is a labor of love with joyous returns for every minute invested. . . or at least that’s what I have been told, I really wouldn’t know. Owning an old SJ21 is an endless forced march to escape the forces time seeking to reduce your boat to a pile of rubble.
Top of my list this winter is to fix some of the damage I received at the 2008 Western Nationals in Coos Bay Oregon. It was the final start of the Regatta and a couple of boats to leeward of me tangled up below me. One of the boats was smacked in the rear forcing it over to a port tack aimed directly at me. I put the helm hard over, but there was nothing to do and the port tacker smashed into Limpet at full speed in opposite directions. It was the most violent collision I have ever been in on a sailboat and it left my port side rear window shattered. The rub rail also had a fairly good dent, but amazingly it didn’t appear to cause any structural damage.
So today I attempted to pull off the window frame so I could replace the broken plexiglass. The frame looked to be slightly damaged but I was cautiously optimistic I could fix it. As usual I completely misjudged the entire situation, and quickly found that the plastic window frames had roughly the same structural integrity as stale candy canes. No matter how gentle I was I snapped the frame. I will just need to get a new one from Gene.
After I got the frames off I also realized that he screws holding the frame together didn’t actually go through the fiberglass the majority of the time. There were plenty of old holes in the glass from previous window installations, but the current frames were not very well attached.
My sympathies are with you, but just be glad the the material (resin infused glass) from which your boat is constructed is non-biodegradable. Those of us with wood hulls are persued with the fervor of a police swat team after a box of Krispycreams by armies of organism that want to eat us.