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.
May '10 update - Repair work on the marina was completed summer 2009, once again making Cape Royale the premiere marina on Lake Livingston. We moved the Starwind back to its home slip in March 2009 and launched our San Juan 24 in September. The sailboat docks are relocated to the end of the cove to make room for more new covered powerboat docks. We found 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.
The Starwind's on the trailer at our friend Del's house. We've pressure-washed the mossy growth off the bottom and that's about it. We've now decided to sell the San Juan 24 and keep the Starwind while looking for a different 25-26-foot boot, so hopefully we'll be cleaning up and fixing the Starwind "real soon now."
Pictures:
Lake Livingston, TX GPS:
Starwind websites:
Other sailing sites:
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Updated 5/9/2010/jbc