I was dawdling in the car listing to the shit that was unfolding on NPR. I could see the mast of my boat bobbing around in the distance, but the hull was hidden by trees. It had been the longest that I had left her (around 18 hours) I walked across the yard to fetch the cart, and as I was walking back I took a quick look at my boat. I found my Folkboat still floating, but just barely. I still had two planks above the water, but they were disappearing fast. I sprinted across the yard, grabbed the extra battery and took off for my dinghy. I threw the battery in, and was off. If I had a slower Dinghy she would have been lost. Instead I have a 12 ft Whitehall skiff that has never been rowed so fast... I made the 100 yards to the boat in record time. There was nothing like an easy landing once there. I lept aboard with the battery in my arms. I reached down and grabbed the old battery, yanked it out of the water, and threw the terminals on the new one. Bilge pumps still didn’t kick on. WTF? I manually switched on one pump, and let it do some work. Realizing that I never plugged the 2.5" hole for the diesel exhaust because I will be putting it in next year, I tore off my shirt and stuffed it into the hole. Next I tore up one of the floating floorboards and got hold of the old exhaust hose. I pulled with all my might and finally it came free. It got it up in the air so water wasn’t coming in at a tremendous rate, and reached down to get the other bilge pumps working. I clearly remember looking down through 3 ft of water and seeing the float switch in the down position. I pulled it up and the 1100 GPH pump went to work. .

So basically she had a 2.5-inch hole 1 foot below the water, and she still hadn't gone down. After I had the big hole plugged I started bailing like Hell. I mean really bailing. I used a battery box, and I have never moved more water in my life. The cockpit floor was easily 1 1/2 feet below the water. They say that nobody bails faster than a scared sailor. You may disagree or think otherwise, But I don’t think that any mechanical pump could have beaten my on that day. I still can't believe that she is afloat. I must have just gotten there at the moment the exhaust hole went below the water.

After things were slightly stabilized and the water was going down slowly I realized that there was still a ¾ inch hole in the port side that was leading to nothing. A couple of days before I had pulled the hand pump in order to work on it. I grabbed that end of hose and got it above water as well. I then went back to bailing. Because she is old and wooden, most of the topside planks hadn’t swelled up yet, and I’m sure that water was coming in at a pretty good rate though the seams. My answer was to keep on bailing like hell. I don’t know how much water I moved, but it had to be around 1000 gallons total. Maybe more.

If anyone is familiar with the Folkboat the water was level with the seats in the cockpit. That left exactly two planks, or about 6" of freeboard left. Down below there was two feet between the water and the cabin top. There is normally 4 feet of room between the cabin top and the bunks, and the bunks are another foot above the highest point of the bilge. We are talking about allot of water.

Initially I was scared that she was going to go down with me on her. I didn’t know if there really would be suction or not. I was also scared to reach into the cabin bilge to get to the pump switches. I meant going through 3ft of water to get to them.

I don't understand why she got that low in the water. The bilge pump needs to run for 4 minutes every hour, which is allot, but not terrible. I do have two batteries, and two bilge pumps. I installed a completely new system including float switch, so I now have 3 systems, but I'm still sleeping on her each night.
After my heart stopped pumping, and I could actually breath, and trust her not to go down I started to clean up. I’m not sure anyone ever realizes how heavy foam rubber cushions get when they are in the water. Those buggers must have weighted around 150 pounds each. I think it will take a steamroller driving over them to squeeze all the water out.

After all this she is getting pulled on Saturday. The one leak is coming in around the front Keel bolt under the mast step, and my next job is to replace all the bolts. A couple of them have been replaced and look pretty good, but still I really need to do it.

I guess it gave me something to think about for the last couple of days.

Noah