I left my good friends and long-suffering hosts, Sara & Steve McCoy, my welder friend Mike Herring and family, bike-riding buddy Ken Holland, and departed Dog River Marina, Mobile, AL for Tarpon Springs, Florida with West Marine’s Gail as crew. Here our trip on the intracoastal waterway was easy as there was plenty of water under our keel.
Then we went into the Gulf of Mexico at Panama City, Florida, to "cut the corner" and run direct to Tarpon Springs. Although the forecast was for calm seas, during the night the wind came up and produced 2-4 foot waves right on the nose of the boat. Such small waves are normally duck soup for a boat of Simba's size and deep draft, but they caused the boat to hobby horse. Again, for Simba, a small problem – right?
Wrong! When I departed Mobile I had two new possessions to carry on Simba. One was a fast, fiberglass runabout dinghy which I proudly hung from the new pipe davits Mike Herring had created. The other was a BMW motorcycle I had purchased and ridden down from Rhode Island. I had hoisted it up to the promenade deck and tied it down to the chocks I had had Mike install for carrying the runabout in rough seas.
The hobby horsing soon caused the dinghy to swing wildly. We tried to secure it with lines, but one soon chafed through and we could not subdue the wild motions of the new boat and its heavy engine. I feared it might be damaged or even lost.
Sonny Middleton, the owner of Dog River Marina, had urged me to buy and squirt a product called Corrosion Block all over the motorcycle to protect it from salt air corrosion. I had followed Sonny’s advice. In addition to handlebar tie down straps running to the chocks, I had secured the rear wheel to the deck railing behind it. On the intracoastal the bike didn't budge, but now the rocking was causing the motorcycle to lurch forward so hard I feared it might pull the railing loose. I tried to add more lines to the bike but found the Corrosion Block had been washed off the bike by spray and was now all over the deck surrounding the bike, rendering it more slippery than wet ice. I tried to crawl to the bike, wishing I had octopus suction cups on my extremities, and saw that the bike’s front wheel was starting to slide sideways. In a moment the bike fell over, as if in slow motion, with no apparent damage. Suddenly all was calm up there. Without wheels to roll on, the bike was tamed like a lassoed calf in a rodeo. I lashed it down to the dinghy chocks and crawled forward on my stomach to the security of the bimini area where the “Collision" Block had not yet spread.
This little roller coaster ride was a mind opener. I have since installed four beefy eye bolts forward on the upper deck where there is a six inch step up. The step serves as a bulwark against which I can strap the front wheel down hard and the rear is secured to the second pair of eye bolts. And I'll take my chances on salt air corrosion damage over Corrosion Block from now on. So more rock ‘n rollin for the bike. While those davits are sure handy on rivers or in harbors, when leaving sheltered waters the runabout goes up on the upper deck where it can be fully secured to chocks without a whimper.
No comments:
Post a Comment