A bit of a fright!

Scott-Free’s blog
Steve & Chris
Mon 4 Dec 2017 22:39

Monday 4th December 2017

 

The sails finally came off yesterday, and this morning we were more than ready for the old girl to be hauled.  We were booked in for mid-morning, and sure enough the guys came to tell us they were ready shortly before 1100.  It wasn’t far to drive to the lift-out bay, but Steve had to do a bit of jiggling around to get her to reverse in.  She doesn’t go straight backwards, and the bow thruster wasn’t working so couldn’t be used to counteract her propwalk.  So it took a couple of tries, but then we got lines across to the guys on shore and they pulled us straight in.

 

All went without a hitch, and soon she was out of the water. The travel lift began trundling towards the spraying bay when suddenly there was an almighty BANG!  My heart leapt into my mouth and I turned around fully expecting to see Scott-Free falling from the slings. Thank goodness, though, she was still sitting fair and square in place.  What a relief! It was one of the enormous tyres on the travel lift that had burst, but they are in pairs, and the other was still holding up ok.  After some worried looks and head-scratching from the yard guys, they finally got her on the move again and into the spraying bay.

 

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Up she comes.                                                                                                                   The inner tyre on the left went with a loud BANG!

 

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She was slowly trundled into the spraying area for a wash down.

 

The yard guys obviously decided they didn’t want to take the boat too far with only one tyre inflated on one corner of the travel lift, so we were put into the nearest empty bay.  That was a bit of luck for us, as the long-term storage area is a fair distance from the showers and toilets.  Sadly for the boats due to be hauled later that day, the travel lift was declared unusable until the tyre was sorted.  We could have done without the fright of the blow-out, but were so glad it hadn’t happened to the boat before us!

 

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We sat in the shade of Indigo 2 with Liz & Chris while S-F was settled.       The flat tyre is easily visible as the travel lift leaves S-F on her cradle.

 

Finally the boat was settled in her cradle and we could have a look below her waterline.  There was a lot of scraping and scratching around the keel where the net had caught us, but otherwise she looked fine.  We have no plans to do any work to her until we return later in the year, so now it’s just a matter of preparing her to be left for a well-earned rest.