Hurricane Ike: Our dock at Cape Royale Marina was badly bent up (see pics below) and the boat was tightly wedged in its slip for about three weeks. The 2-HP Suzuki outboard broke off it's bracket and disappeared, one stanchion was bent, there was one bad scrape on the starboard side and some minor scratches on the portside. There was a good amount of water onboard due to wind-blown rain, but after pumping that out it never took on more water. On Oct. 5th we took a chain and pulled the docks apart enough to squeeze the boat out of the slip; after some fussing with the trolling motor from the fishing boat tied onto the stern, we got it to the single undamaged pier in the marina.
In spite of the hull damage being fairly light, it was enough with the outboard loss that Progressive Insurance totaled the boat, mainly because we had it underinsured for our original purchase price and had never upped the value in spite of making several improvements. But then they sold it back to us for a salvage price of about 1/10th what it should be worth when repaired with a new bottom job.
June '09 update - Repair work on the marina is mostly completed - the sailboat docks are relocated to the end of the cove to make room for more new covered powerboat docks. We moved the Starwind back to its home slip in March only to find our end slip closest to the bulkhead collected a lot of debris when the wind was from the south. So we've now moved from the closest end to the far end of the same dock. That will be the home of the San Juan when we finally get it launched.
The Starwind's bottom is atrocious after not moving since September, but we're still concentrating for now on getting the San Juan 24 sailing, then the Starwind will go on the trailer for repairs, bottom job, and will probably be for sale.
Pictures:
Lake Livingston, TX GPS:
Starwind websites:
Other sailing sites:
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Updated 6/19/2009/jbc