Repairing holed hull while underway

J

John S

New member
I'm looking for some ideas and/or suggestions.

We will be launching our TC24 out of Haines, AK in early June and spending the month cruising the Northern portion of the inside passage for the month. We plan on squeezing into EVERY out of the way bay and passageway.

What I'm looking for are ideas on how to handle a particular emergency situation. It we hit one of those partially submerged logs or a pointy rock and put a small hole in the hull below waterline what are our immediate temporary repair options, besides bailing.

We have a large amount of Marine Tex epoxy on board. Would slipping into the water in my survival suit or dinghy and pushing a large glob of mixed epoxy in the hole be a possibility.

I'm open to ideas that hopefully I never have to use.

Thanks
 
John,

I am sure you will get a lot of suggestions for your question. Some people carry a large tarp that can be pulled over the holed area and fastened to cleats and rails that will stop the flow long enough to make a plan. In the northwest with the large tides it would allow you time to beach the boat where you can use your marine tex to repair the damage or possibly make it to a marina.

It will be interesting to read some of the responses that I am sure this thread will generate.

Regards
Ryder
 
ryder":hj8nnhre said:
John,

Some people carry a large tarp that can be pulled over the holed area and fastened to cleats and rails that will stop the flow long enough to make a plan.
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I have read about this method and I think it would be very effective also, I believe in the old days of sailing they actually used one of their sails. I think there is even a certain word for this. But.......in my situation I have a catamaran hull, so this method probably wouldn't work as well for us, especially if we then tried to motor to a beach. This would certainly work well for a monohulled C-Dory.

Thanks and I also am looking forward to some more of the thoughts out there.
 
Other than fast acting epoxy that someone sells for emergency use I
saw a LST repaired in Vietnam with cement. Take lots of bags eh!
Bob Heselberg
 
John S":6zfcliou said:
I'm looking for some ideas and/or suggestions.

We will be launching our TC24 out of Haines, AK in early June and spending the month cruising the Northern portion of the inside passage for the month. We plan on squeezing into EVERY out of the way bay and passageway.

What I'm looking for are ideas on how to handle a particular emergency situation. It we hit one of those partially submerged logs or a pointy rock and put a small hole in the hull below waterline what are our immediate temporary repair options, besides bailing.

We have a large amount of Marine Tex epoxy on board. Would slipping into the water in my survival suit or dinghy and pushing a large glob of mixed epoxy in the hole be a possibility.

I'm open to ideas that hopefully I never have to use.

Thanks
Click to expand...

I would beach it & let it go dry, Patch it & get back to Fishing or Sightseeing. If you get into the 40deg water you will probably spend your last moments there :wink:

Good Luck!:mrgreen: :beer
 
Good topic! I have thought about this as well and here's where I am on (hope never to use) solutions. If there are through hulls that may fail, I'd have a selection of the tapered wood plugs sold in marine stores to fit the hole and hammer them in from the inside. I have a spare hull drain plug velcroed right beside the transom drain hole in case that failed. A hole due to a rock/log, etc. would, I think, be too irregular for a wooden plug to work so in that case if the hole were large enough, I'd drive a pillow/blanket/seat cushion foam through the hole from the inside and head for shore. If the hole is in the forward part of the hull I'd trim the boat so the bow was as high out of the water as possible using engine trim and trim tabs weight in the stern, etc. and try to "mush" through the water keeping the holed area as dry as possible. I'd also trim the boat laterally using trim tabs to generate a list with the holed side up as high as possible. I'm not sure any of these would really work but thats as far as I've gotten on the problem. I'm really interested to hear what the "old hands" have to say.
 
Hi John,
Others with more experience will chime in but I have always thought plugs would be the best temporary way to go. I would bang in a plug such as shown in the following link:

http://www.jamestowndistributors.com/us ... 4055&PTECH

The hole from an impact would not be a perfect circle but you need to reduce airspace for the water to get in. Bilge pumps on, choose a speed that keeps the hole out of the water if possible (i.e. bow high, etc.). Of course the real repair is grinding out the hole, filling core with epoxy paste, and laying fiberglass cloth on the inside, etc., etc.
 
John

I may be wrong, but if you hit hard enough to need trying to stop leak with tarp a sat phone call for help would be a better option. With the tides making it to shore and patching between them with one of the fast curing epoxies is a good option and one we would have considered last year when in the areas you are planning on seeing. The one rock we did hit was during a very high tide and was more concerned about getting off before the tide dropped. At very low speeds the chance of holing is pretty slim or at least that was what we were banking on when exploring some of the areas we did.

Hitting a rock or debris is a valid concern and one not to be taken lightly especially with the tomcat and its higher cruising speeds. We have had many close calls with debris in choppy conditions where if the speed had been higher the outcome could have been bad.

The charts with gps don't accurately reflect where you really are in many of the out of the way places you want to go and the rocks in many places are very jagged, so low speed and a careful lookout are a must. Not trying to spook you just agreeing with your prudence in having a plan for the just in case. Wished we were making another trip in this area again this year too.

Jay
 
After reading the promotional literature, you'll want to find out exactly what's in the kit and how much it costs. Look HERE.

Might be fun to price out your own kit for a small boat like a C-Dory!

Joe. :teeth :thup
 
tsturm":cgjcymb8 said:
I would beach it & let it go dry, Patch it & get back to Fishing or Sightseeing. If you get into the 40deg water you will probably spend your last moments there :wink:
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JMR II, hey we saw you guys in Homer for the King Derby, hope you caught one.
Back to holing the hull though. If the water weren't rough and the tide wasn't too bad I would not hesitate to jump in while wearing my survival suit, if I thought I might save the boat. We carry a dinghy also and at that point we would probably want it in the water too. I've been swimming in Sadie Cove years ago to retrieve a previous boat, but that's another story.

As far as beaching it, well......beaches that are satisfactory for beaching a fiberglass hulled boat have been few and far between for us on the SC Alaska coast and it looks as if the SE coast holds more of the same.
 
Hunkydory":y5b55x5m said:
I may be wrong, but if you hit hard enough to need trying to stop leak with tarp a sat phone call for help would be a better option. With the tides making it to shore and patching between them with one of the fast curing epoxies is a good option and one we would have considered last year when in the areas you are planning on seeing. The one rock we did hit was during a very high tide and was more concerned about getting off before the tide dropped. At very low speeds the chance of holing is pretty slim or at least that was what we were banking on when exploring some of the areas we did.
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Jay, I agree with your thoughts about the slow cruise speed, it will help our fuel last also. We just need to get the right attitude for the slow and easy mentaility, sometimes even my wife is the one who is saying "can't you make it go faster", but we have lots to see that would be better at a leisurely pace. Thanks again for all you've written and your advice that has made our planning for this trip so much easier. We will basically attempt your original plan down the outer coast to Sitka. Wish we had a Mokai!

As far as the Sat phone, we won't be carrying one on this trip. We will have a PLB, my preference is to be more self reliant and use the PLB as a true last resort.
 
Minnow":37n3stza said:
SeaKits makes a damage control kit that sounds like what you're looking for.
http://www.seakits.com/pressrelease_11012006.php
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Interesting kit! I'm not sure about spending $325, but I'm sure that would seem cheap when holed. I'm still wondering about how hammering a wedged piece of wood into a irregular weakened area of fiberglass would go. The thought of making the hole even bigger sure is scary.

Kind of unique to the Tomcat is that most of the hull below the waterline isn't accessible from inside the boat without hours of panel and tank removal. The solution would likely need to come from the outside. A suggestion I found at the Alaska Marine Safety Educ. Assoc. sight http://www.amsea.org was having NERF products (like the football) along to plug holes. They have great ideas and guidelines for conducting drills also.
 
I vote for duct tape, bailing wire, and a shot of Bushmills - heck bring the whole bottle, and then get into the dingy with your handheld radio just as she's going down....
 
Learned this trick from the Coast Guard. Best darn plug for holes in fiberglass is a Nerf football!! Sealife carries a couple. They can easily be wedged into any shape hole without danger of splitting the hull further. Simple, inepensive, and very effective.
 
I put an emergency repair kit together during my sailing days and have a similar one on board Valkyrie.

It contains tapered pine plugs that can be driven into broken though-hulls, water-activated fiberglass cloth that cures in water and two-part epoxy in a stick form with the consistency of putty or clay. Just rip off a chunk, kneed it and stuff it in place. A West Systems
Maxi Pack that contains enough epoxy, filler and necessary applicators for six small repairs is also handy.

Fortunately, the epoxy kit is the only item that has seen use, but it feels good having the other essentials aboard.

Regards,

Nick
"Valkyrie"
 
John S,
Sounds like a great trip. If you care to be more self reliant than Jay and Jolie on Hunky Dory you'll not need a patch kit and probably wouldn't feel the need to ask for advice ahead of time. Good luck and be careful.

JT :smiled
 
That water activated fiberglass cloth really works well. I got some at Lowes to do a temporary repair on a water line on my well. Thats been 6 months ago and it still holding well under 60 lbs pressure.
 
JT":1lwjpd5f said:
John S,
Sounds like a great trip. If you care to be more self reliant than Jay and Jolie on Hunky Dory you'll not need a patch kit and probably wouldn't feel the need to ask for advice ahead of time. Good luck and be careful.

JT :smiled
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I would NEVER claim to be more self reliant than Jay & Jolie, we just won't have a sat phone with us and I don't want to call the helicopters in with my PLB if we can take care of it ourselves. You can be sure I will be on the radio fast if it were to happen, but you can't take back the PLB activation once it's done.
 
Valkyrie":3ng0oytt said:
I put an emergency repair kit together during my sailing days and have a similar one on board Valkyrie.

It contains tapered pine plugs that can be driven into broken though-hulls, water-activated fiberglass cloth that cures in water and two-part epoxy in a stick form with the consistency of putty or clay. Just rip off a chunk, kneed it and stuff it in place. A West Systems
Maxi Pack that contains enough epoxy, filler and necessary applicators for six small repairs is also handy.
Click to expand...

Nick & Marvin, this water activated fiberglass sounds great, I'm still trying to figure out if it would work on a hole, everything I see online so far talks about using it for wrapping pipes. In your guys experience could you make a patch that would adhere from the exterior of the boat hull with this? I'm going to check out the West Systems Maxi Pack. I'm guessing I can find the epoxy putty at West Marine?

Thanks
 
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