Alarife Wreck

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Storms come often here in the summer. Here is how they start.

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Thunder clouds starting

We often get these and they are beautiful when they start, but they quickly get scary.

By night fall they are getting strong

On the Weather Underground we can see how big they are

This video 4 minute, shot and edited by Scuba Ninja, shows the strength of the storm and the aftermath. It is a sad ending for Alarife, and I do doubt that the boat will be resurrected, although it would be great if it is.
scuba ninja video-dee dee christensen


wingssail images-fredrick roswold
And in the morning, it's over

We don't know if Alarife will be recovered and repaired, but we doubt it. It is so sad.

Below are some photos of Alarife in better times.

Alarife and Wings, Racing

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Alarife in the foreground, with the all white sail

wingssail images-fredrick roswold
Refloating after a Week's Work

Movement to the Travel Lift

Lifting Out 1

Lifting out 2

Observers

Will she clear?

Brent

Brent, Superb diver and amazingly hard worker, stuck with this project until the diving part was done. Dozens of tanks of air. Brent and his partner Dee Dee did the lion's share of this recovery.

One hole of four

Bow hole and sail rupturing out

Mike Danielson goes up for inspection

On the hard
The boat is now stripped, mast off, deck cleared, interior removed, ready for repair.

Stern View

Big hole, one of 5

Mid-Summer Project-Installment 1

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Project Plan

This is an extract of our project plan. We don't follow this exactly, and it is constantly changing, but it gives us a good list to work from and is better than an 8.5x14 yellow legal pad, which we'd have used otherwise.

Foredeck Workshop

We set up a workshop on the foredeck under the awning. Here we could do woodwork, sanding, painting, and other project work. Note the temporary hatch cover which keeps the hatch closed while we refurb the big bow hatch.

Empty Bins

We have 9 large storage bins in the aft cabin and we needed to empty them all to remove the partitions and shelves. Here they are emptied. Next we'll take out all the honeycomb partitions and shelves so we can clean and paint. Also, we needed to remove all of this so we could get access to the water tank (tank #3) which is under these partitions. Tank #3 had a leak. Fortunately we were able to fix it by working through the inspection plate, otherwise we'd have to yank out that tank, not a pleasant task. We recognize however, that this fix might be temporary, and the whole process might need to be repeated in the future.

Stuff

Those storage bins swallowed a lot of stuff. We pulled things out and piled it everywhere in the boat.

More stuff

And More stuff


Cloth

These rolls of cloth were in the pipe berth on the other side of the aft cabin, and they had to come out too.

Painting

One of the nastiest jobs on a boat is painting the overhead. After emptying the whole aft cabin, and attacking it with a high pressure washer, we then dried the whole area, masked everything, and painted it with polyurethane paint. Whew! glad that's done.

Baby sawhorses

Meanwhile we took all the boards topsides and painted them too. Here some of them are waiting to be reinstalled. Note the baby sawhorses we made?

Back together

Finally we had finished the aft cabin and tank #3 task. It was all done on schedule, as were the other high priority tasks on our plan, which included the bow hatch, and repairing the leaking deck in the head.

Tomato Loving Rat

While this was going on a rat snuck on board and one morning we found a tomato with a bite out of it. We quickly got a trap and used a tomato for bait. We set the trap at 10:00 PM that night and by 2:00AM we had captured the rat.

No, rats are not pleasant, but I really grew fond of this rat. What a beautiful and perfect animal it was! So instead of killing it I took it out in the jungle about 3 miles and let it go. I hope he doesn't find his way back to the boat. We found no other signs of this rat's presence, I mean nothing other than a bite out of the bread sack too. But no rat droppings anywhere or mess, such as a nest. And how did he get in?


Standby next month for more progress reports.