13 July 2016

Strike!!

Hi Gang!!

Time to revive the blog!

I am not going to put the rest of the schedule for the season up yet, but Something funny happened on the way to the forum....

I did a bottom scrub last week prior to the Chicago-Michigan City-Chicago Race. When I was down at the keel, I noticed that there was a mark on the side of the bulb. It looked remarkably like a lightning strike exit. I popped up and told the skipper about it, and then got back to work.

I dove the boat today, but this time I had Don't underwater camera. It looks like we had multiple
exit points along the keel. There is not another mark on the boat, not a single one.

So I posted the pics on here so that I could also upload the video and it wouldn't kill your data streams if you were checking email on your phone.

First notice the spot

Exit holes on the front of the keel
 So, this was the first thing I noticed. There is another spot on the other side of the bulb of the keel. At first I thought it was a pretty aggressive bit of plant life, but there is no doubt it was bare metal.









At Right, Multiple exit spots along the front of the keel. Thankfully, the keel is solid lead, so there is no real damage to the function of the keel, other than corrosion. The paint is to make it smooth, and prevent corrosion. We'll have to sand the spots down (under water) and then repaint to protect the surface.








Looks like we got shot!

Not too sure the drive escaped damage.
 Here is a close up of an exit hole. You can see the pitting; last week was the first scrub of the bottom this season... usually I have done it two or three times at this point. The water had been cold, but in this close-up you can see that even though it was scrubbed last week, there is already some growth (warm water and sunshine help!) We have no idea when this could have happened this season-- All our electronics are acting normally, and no other boats around us have had any issues.



The drive looks a little worse for wear.... might be something else to inspect.











So lastly, I shot this video from the front of the keel to the mating point where it meets the hull. You can see the multiple exit points from the front of the keel itself. Any way you look at it, we are lucky that nothing was damaged further than what is basically paint chipping.