Sea Trial Trials

The Dreadnought is a Fail. That's the verdict. But since life is about the journey (not the destination)... here's the story.

It was Sunday morning. D day for the Dreadnought. We got The Dreadnought on the box trailer and hooked onto Bruce's troopie. Skull Drag'n was hitched behind the Dmax. With the Dmax in the lead, we headed off down the treacherous 2km drive to the servo to top up Skull Drag’n with fuel before going to the boat ramp.

We hadn't gone 1km when over the radio we heard Daph on the 2 way. "errrrr. we're in trouble". “What's up?” I asked.  And she answered, "we've got no breaks". You could hear the tension in her voice. With no place to pull over, Bruce knocked down the gears and followed us to the servo which was just down the road, and the first safe place to pull over. 

At the servo Bruce popped the bonnet, and and instantly pointed at the brake fluid reservoir, which was low. A quick look down the back and we found brake fluid leaking out near the back right wheel. Clearly we couldn't be driving down the highway like that. We quickly made plans to head back home and switch out the troopie for the Patrol so we can finish the boat mission, and worry about the break problem after that.

So we  crawled back home in first gear with the hazard lights on. A bit of careful maneuvering and soon we had the troopie parked and The Dreadnought hooked onto good ol faithful Pedro the Patrol. Then it was off the the boat ramp.

IT was pissing down rain as we launched the boats. I was soon on the water with Skull Drag'n and waiting for the launch of The Dreadnought. I'd like to say the launch was a non event, but it almost ended in tears as Daz stepped from the pontoon to the little tinnie. He's not used to little tinnies, and didn't step into the centre far enough. With all his weight in the back port corner it sank down and pushed it under the surface causing the sudden inrush of water. Daz then nearly lost his balance and rolled it, but somehow scrambled to level it out and make it all steady again (albeit with a gutful of water). But while the boat stayed upright, it was it was too late for Dazz's pride. Everyone at the ramp was in various stages of smirking, guffawing, or doubled over in stitches. It was a classic boat ramp moment which didn't bode well for the rest of the mission. (What ELSE could go wrong?) 

Waiting in the rain for The Dreadnought to launch

The rain was coming down hard while Daz drove The Dreadnought around and drained out the water as quickly as the rain filled it. Then, thankfully it stopped as he came alongside Skull Drag'n and CAREFULLY transferred into the big boat. We had a towing harness ready and set it up for the all important towing test. Ok ready? Ease on the power, let's see how she tows.

not too bad in the calm...

We started in the calm part of the river and experimented with tow rope lengths. It wasn't BAD but it wasn't great either. Of particular concern was there was a bit of a rooster tail at the back of The Dreadnought that was spraying water into the back of the boat and slowly filling it up. Also she was light in the bow causing a fair bit of pitching about. We added a jerry can of water to the bow for weight and experimented with the trailing height of the outboard, but it really didn't seem to help much. However we got the tow rope length to a comfortable point, so we headed out of the river into the Moreton bay chop to see what it would be like in the rough. It was blowing a stiff 25 kn south-westerly which was kicking up the bay into a decent chop. 

Well it wasn't pretty for The Dreadnought. If all we wanted to do was cruise around at 10km/ph then it might be ok. But at 30km/ph (which is barely on the plane for Skull Drag'n), The Dreadnought was airborne! At one stage it was airborne and sideways and the whole family had their heads in their hands cringing in expectation for what seemed like a likely capsize. Somehow it righted itself, but the decision committee was rattled. The decision was a unanimous and emphatic "NO". 

...but it wants to go sideways :(

With the decision made, we turned our heads back to the boat ramp and chugged home, pulled the boats out and went home to have a look at Bruce's troopie breaks.

So while Nat and Daph cleaned the boats, Daz and Bruce set to work on the troopie. The troopie breaks we what we refer to a "properly fucked".  The disk rotor was cracked all the way through and the piston in the brake caliper bent up to buggery, and the brake pads?! What brake pads?  So Bruce spent the next day replacing the caliper and disk rotor - which was surprisingly inexpensive. 

Bruce pulling the breaks apart on the troopie

Damaged rotor disk

Bruce - muttering "ohhh deary me"

Wrecked break bits

But wait there's more. When cleaning Skull Drag'n, I noticed the return of an old nemesis. Fuel vapors. This has been an ongoing problem for us. We clean it out with soapy water, and next time we too up the fuel the smell is overpowering. There's also an unhealthy amount of fuel coming out the bung at the back of the boat. This has us suspicious that there's a hole near the top of the fuel tank and it might be leaking fuel through the boat. If that's the case it represents a serious safety issue. Cooking & sleeping on the boat among fuel vapor could end in disaster. So we're going to have to investigate. 

So in the next exciting chapter get high with us as we rip up the floor and inspect the fuel tank! 

The Dreadnought

Ok so something that's been bothering us is the decision whether to take a small tinnie with us to be our tender. The arguments for:

• Useful to ferry  people and equipment over shallow water to get from boats to shore and vica verca
• Useful to get up shallow rivers to do a bit of estuary fishing
• Can be man-handled over obstacles like rock bars in rivers to get to remote fishing spots
• Can be used as a survival boat, say, if something goes horribly wrong with one of the big boats.

The arguments against:

• Towing it will chew a lot more fuel
• Not sure I'm keen of going up estuaries in a flimsy roof topper given that a big croc could treat it like entree.
• I wonder if the tinnie would just fill up with water and sink if we hit rough weather with it in tow, thus becoming a risk in itself
• If something went badly wrong (say, really rough weather,  capsizing etc) causing the loss of a big boat, I can't imagine the tinnie would survive the same event anyway.
• Having it in tow will be a mighty pain in the arse if we are trolling, or doing anything that requires reversing (eg, setting the anchor). Not impossible, but annoying.

Ok, so therein lies the quandary. Some of these problems can be managed, so we've decided to prep a tinnie for the job, give it a few trial runs and make a decision from there. If it doesn't work out we'll just sell it.

So meet "The Dreadnought". 

Nat and Daz picked up this clapped out 3.1m tinnie for $1200 off Facebook classifieds. The hull is pretty old and hasn't seen much love. It had some leaky cracks where the hull joins onto the transom and someone had drilled a hole in the seam at the bow to make a tow hole. Sadly all they did was put a leaky hole in the bow. That said, it's got a pretty new 6hp 4 stroke Suzuki that starts first pull,  foam under the seats for buoyancy and the owner threw in his fish finder with the deal.

The renovator's dream

Bit of an acid wash and a clean up and she's looking pretty

Ready to test launch

well she floats....but she's a bit leaky...

We've spent a day with Sam at Performance Plate Boats welding and making attachments for it to get it the way we want, including:

• Welding up the cracks and holes, 
• Adding carry handles, 
• Adding a tough towing lug on the bow, 
• Adding 4 X rod holders, 
• Adding some lugs on the transom for a transducer,
• Adding a removable torsion bar access the bow so Nat  can sow a canvas nose cone to it. This will hopefully deflect some of the water when towing it in the rough stuff.

the 4 lugs on the transom are to mount the transducer and other random

New handles on the front and the removable torsion bar for the nose cone. We've also built a platform in the front so the bilge pump battery has a place to sit.

Rod holders, handles, and removable torsion bar for the nose cone.

Since then Nat has sewed up a nose cone out of an old windsurfer sail. It's a bit rough and if it passes sea trial #1 Daph will have a job to toughen up the sewing with her industrial sewing machine.

 

• Daz has fitted a battery in the bow and wired in a bilge pump with a float switch in the stern so if it takes on water it'll spit it back out.
• Daz and Bruce have made a harness to winch it onto the roof of Bruce's truck.
• Daz and Bruce have made a towing harness out of cable and Nat has spliced rope loops for where the harness attaches to the big boat (the rope is so we can cut it loose if it sinks while still attached to the big boat and becomes a sea anchor/ safety risk).

Here's the results so far:

So this weekend it's sea trial #1 day. We'll be launching Skull Drag'n' and The Dreadnought and testing out how the towing situation works, making some mods and generally seeing if it's going to be more trouble than it's worth. Moreton bay is predicted to be a bit sloppy, which will prove a worthy test. So let's see what happens.