It all started when I drove up to the boat and saw the broken thru hull above. I found the flange a good distance from the boat. Not knowing what transpired at the boatyard where we were on the hard for the winter, I wondered how that happened and groaned at the extra repair I'd have to do before launching the boat. But this was only the beginning of what would be a long and expensive journey that would delay our retirement goal of extended sailing in 2018.
Later that same day, I noted the radio didn't work. "Guess I'd have to work without music. The radio must have been at its end of life" was the thought. I was cleaning the bilges and noted that the bilge pump wasn't working. But oddly, if I turned the radio on, I could use the float switch to cycle the bilge pump. "That's not right. What's going on?" I still didn't get it but I spent a good amount of time trying to isolate what switchology I could use to cycle the bilge pump. It was a logic test that I wasn't prepared to do because I still thought this was all simple. I left that day not connecting any dots to what happened, instead I went home befuddled with a growing list of repairs.
My priority was getting the boat back in the water and the thru hull had to be replaced for that to happen, even if it was above the waterline. So the next day, I attempted to remove the thru hull remains. The backside is the stern lazarette under a shelf deep down from the small hatch. It was impossible to see without using a camera or mirrors. The only way I could "see" it was to go head first down the hole. Blood rushed to my head and one hand was pushing off the bottom to keep from falling all the way in. I reached a bit extra to see and almost collapsed into the hole upside down. Had I fallen all the way I doubt I could have gotten out. Alone, the fear of what I'd done sent a big squirt of adrenaline allowing my weak muscles to squirm back out. I was very lucky.
So I decided to remove the shelf blocking access to the thru hulls. Not an easy task by itself, this would be the beginning of some significant dismantling and it would reveal the evidence that put everything I'd observed so far into perspective, soot.
The photo was taken after I had replaced the all the thru hulls but you can clearly see soot. As it turned out that thru hull that broke apart, it was for the bilge pump outflow. Now I had a theory, lighting. Strong storms had come through the yard a month prior with a possible twister close by causing some damage to some masts stored nearby. It couldn't have been a direct hit in my assessment, just nearby since I didn't have gel cote or other physical damage but it was now a plausible theory that we were struck.
I had a new haulout task, troubleshoot all the electrical. Catalog what was and wasn't working. But I didn't know how the boat was wired or anything about the electronics. There were numerous systems that I had no familiarity with from our other boats; inverter, solar, multifunction display, autopilot, air conditioning, GPS, satcom, battery monitor, generator, and modern wiring. It was overwhelming and although I had a "Beneteau wiring diagram" it only explained the circuit breaker panel. There was so much more to it than that and the cross over between 12VDC and 110VAC. So I looked at it from the user perspective, what works and what doesn't work. The more I chronicled the more I believed a strike was the only thing that could explain all the damage. I was looking at thousands of dollars just to repair those items that were working in the Fall and I wondered if the insurance company could help.
GEICO Marine (Boat US) was wonderful. They sent a surveyor out to look it over who then suggested a electronic tech who would spend a week exercising all the systems and bench testing components. His list was bigger than mine and they estimated a price to repair everything. GEICO wrote a check and we were off to the refurbishment phase. Or at least I thought I was. What I didn't realize, that as thorough as we were, it wouldn't reveal everything that would be found as systems were dismantled to be repaired. Numerous simple things add up to something significant so much so that the cost ballooned.
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