Mid Size Power Boats

Closer to Home

Granted, most owners of mid sized boats will never venture far from shore.

Of course, many when they first buy a boat have no intentions of going very far, but then one day something prompts them to go farther afield.

Perhaps an invitation to join a group cruise or some other boating activity that is not usual for the boat owner.

Such was the case of Mr. Able Baker (fictitious), the owner of a 36’ express cruiser that was 14 months old.

Baker was an attorney in a law firm where two other lawyers were boaters and avid fishermen who told Baker that kingfish were running strong and convinced him to take the next day off and go fishing.

Not being much of a fisherman himself, he decided to give it a try and the following morning, he and the two other lawyers and a secretary hopped aboard and headed out into the Gulf Stream.

Seas were running about two foot or less with a light swell from the north and it was altogether a very pleasant day, typical of spring time in South Florida.

They did, indeed, catch some fish and after more than a half day of trolling, they were hot and sunburned and decided to stop for a swim.

At the time they were about two miles out in the deep, indigo blue waters of the Gulf Stream.

The wind had fallen off and the water was even calmer than when they started out with a light swell from north.

Too deep to anchor, they threw a couple of trailing lines out for safety and drifted. All four of them jumped in the water and were frolicking around when they noticed very big swells passing from the southeast, probably about four footers. The boat was also oriented with the stern to the southeast.

Unknown to them, these swells were the wake of a passing super tanker that was long out of sight.

They were unaware that such wakes can travel for dozens of miles from ships that are far out of sight, appearing without warning like rogue waves which, in a sense, they are.

What one of the more experienced lawyers noticed next alerted him to a possible danger: The stern of their boat was heaving up and down in the swells and the open transom door was going far under water with the water rushing well up into the cockpit.

This happened several times. This fellow hollered that they should get back aboard and check it out, which they did.

As they started climbing aboard the swim platform, they couldn’t help but notice that it was now nearly submerged, whereas before, the platform was a good six inches above the water line.

Water was now washing into the cockpit with every rise and fall of the boat on the light swells.

The first person into the cockpit was horrified to see that one of the deck hatches had floated out of position, and water was now pouring directly into the hull.

This was a rear engine, vee drive boat, so the water was going directly onto one engine, the one directly in front of the transom door.

This more experienced boater/lawyer immediately comprehended the danger they were in and so went to start the port engine because he knew that if they lost power, they would lose the radio and the bilge pumps since it already looked like the batteries were going under.

Unfortunately, the battery selector switch was located in a bad spot, low in the engine compartment, so that it was already underwater, shorting out the system.

So were the engine start circuit breakers, a common situation of this type of boat. The engine would not start, but the radio was still on and he managed to get off a mayday with their position before it, too, quit.

By the time the last person had climbed back aboard, it was clear that the boat was going down as the cockpit was now awash.

They tried to hold the hatch covers down, but the surging water within the hull caused air pressurization that kept blowing them up and out of place.

Realizing that there was no hope, Baker said that the life preservers were located under a berth in the forward cabin and the lady went to go get them and bring them out while he continued to stand on the hatch cover and hold it down.

She no sooner disappeared through the companionway when another swell heaved the stern up, then down for the last time.

Baker floated away, out of the cockpit while the others, panicked with the realization that the woman was trapped in the cabin.

The boat was now floating bow up with water up to the windshield.

One of the men valiantly tried to dive down through the open door and bring the woman out, but the surging motion of the boat rammed his head into something very hard, almost causing him to black out.

At this point the cockpit upholstery cushions had floated to the surface and to which all were clinging.

This story has a less than tragic ending because the boat did not completely sink due to a large amount of air trapped in the bow and some real heads-up thinking by one of the men.

The bow hatch was partly above, partly below the water as he swam around to try to look inside because he could hear the woman frantically pounding on something.

He could actually see her arm flailing around in front of the hatch, but he knew that as soon as he opened the hatch, the boat would go down completely as all the air escaped. He also knew that there was another hatch down deeper.

He shouted to the woman, who could hear what he was saying, telling her to open the lower hatch which was about four feet beneath the surface.

He knew that opening the hatch that was below the water would not let the trapped air out that was keeping the boat afloat.

That was real heads-up thinking that saved the woman’s life. After much struggle, this hatch was opened and they got her out.

The story does not end here for naturally the lawyer/owner wanted to sue the boat builder, maintaining that the boat was unseaworthy, which it certainly was.

So did the insurance company that paid a total loss on the boat.

Unfortunately for him, he got a really good deal on the boat from a dealer that told him they were “clearing inventory” because they were dropping that builder’s line of products and taking on another.

That wasn’t exactly true: the line was dropped because that builder had just gone bankrupt. He could sue if he liked, but he’d have to stand in line with the rest of that company’s creditors for what little was left of an insolvent company.

In recent years there have been very few truly good sea going boats built in the US with the standout exception of sport fishermen and a very limited number of others.

The vast majority of boats built today are fair weather flyers, boats designed primarily to attract the numerous newcomers too boating, along with the chronically inexperienced with their attraction to trendy styles and appeals to luxury.

The days of the more seaworthy pleasure craft that were designed by naval architects, such as those boats by Hatteras, Chris Craft in its heyday, Bertram, Pacemaker, Egg Harbor, Trojan, and many others, came to an end in the 1980’s, replaced by boats basically created by people trained on CAD machines and in slick marketing tactics and who know little about boats.

In the never ending quest for profits, the skill levels of the people who actually build the boats is nowhere near what it was just two decades ago.

Twenty years ago the writing of this book would not have been necessary; today it is.

The lack of experience and proper training displayed by boat designers today is a central theme of this book for the purpose educating boat buyers so that they may be alert to such deficiencies.