Lost Their Boat Two Days into their Adventure?

[rabbidoninoz]

Anybody have additional information about this couple in Florida and how they met such a disaster? The online article is just from a human drama viewpoint and doesn't really say much to satisfy the sailor in me.

Thanks in advance,

Don

Couple sells all possessions for sailboat, sinks 2 days into trip | Fox News

[SailsWithFists]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7fLn5DItPw

[IslandHopper]

http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/...ze-197254.html

[rabbidoninoz]

The article from the Tampa Bay Times does fill on more details, thanks for that.

Don

[AZUS]

Is it possible to buy a liveaboard boat for $5,000, invest another $5,000 and be highly assured that you have a seaworthy vessel? I feel for them, and admire adventurers, but is this a really unforeseeable outcome?

[Boatguy30]

Boat Alexandria?

[Dave22q]

Originally Posted by AZUS

Is it possible to buy a liveaboard boat for $5,000, invest another $5,000 and be highly assured that you have a seaworthy vessel? I feel for them, and admire adventurers, but is this a really unforeseeable outcome?

Possible? Sure. Likely? Not!

[SailsWithFists]

Originally Posted by AZUS

Is it possible to buy a liveaboard boat for $5,000, invest another $5,000 and be highly assured that you have a seaworthy vessel? I feel for them, and admire adventurers, but is this a really unforeseeable outcome?

It is possible to buy a boat for $1, invest $0 and be highly assured that you have a seaworthy vessel, but only if you know what you are doing and then execute accordingly.

[Cheechako]

We've said it time and time again here on CF. There is nothing free about a free boat. Trusting a budget production sailboat with a bolt on keel and spade rudder that is decades old may be a bad gamble. Worse, if you dont completely rebuild it (and sometimes it's more than a refit that's the problem) you just dont know. Rebel Heart is a good example. The boat came apart at the seams. There was another example of the same thing on a small boat last year between Columbia and the ABC's. Came right apart at the deck seam in rough water. There's an old situation where a Cheoy Lee came apart at the deck joint on the Oregon coast in rough weather. But Rebel Heart wasnt really in rough water.
Blue water is always a risk. Boating always has some risk. "Just buy a boat and go" is not valid advice for some.
I remember sitting in Georgetown Bahamas for a couple months and a family came in to harbor with a multitude of boat issues. IIRC it was a Nicholson. They had obviously bought it, assured by the owner that it was in great shape and took his word for it. Based on the wiring kluge ... it was not. The father was a high school shop teacher, but seemed to have no common sense of mechanics. We tried to help him with a few things like a wiring mess etc. He had anchored right in front of town and the boat pitched and rolled in the waves all night. Eventually he broke the chain and had a Chinese fire drill in the middle of the night. We snorkeled and found his chain and anchor buried in the sand, it wasnt easy even in that shallow water. The clevis attaching chain to anchor was tiny and very rusty. Just an example of poor knowledge. Their cruise dreams ended in G town last I heard.

[letsgetsailing3]

The unforeseeable part here is that a sympathetic news media story would be written about the boat that cost them their lifesavings (at 26 years of age) sinking after a two day trip, and that the story would go national.

Then crowdfunding would give them $15-25K to clean up the wreckage and get another boat.

[fatherchronica]

It is crumby for them, but it doesn't always matter whether it is at the start of your first adventure or during your 15th adventure that disaster strikes. Several of my heroes, notably Moitessier and Tilman, sank boats over and over and just kept on going. That it happened in a harbor near shore in America might make it less traumatic than being stranded on an island in the Indian Ocean or the Caribbean like the first two of Moitessiers losses, or being stranded on a big rock for several days near Greenland like one of Tilmans losses. Good luck to them whatever they do, they are still young and things are just things after all.

[boatman61]

Still don't think the keel came off.. this is not what would happen..

“We started freaking out because waves were coming, and it was tossing our boat back and forth,” Walsh recalled.
Broadwell was at the rear of the boat, holding onto Remy when the trouble hit.
Holding the wheel and engine controls works better.. a lesson learnt..

[letsgetsailing3]

Originally Posted by boatman61

Still don't think the keel came off.. this is not what would happen..

Are you saying you don't trust the analysis of people with a combined total of a week of cruising experience to diagnose the problem with the boat?

[thomm225]

Originally Posted by AZUS

Is it possible to buy a liveaboard boat for $5,000, invest another $5,000 and be highly assured that you have a seaworthy vessel? I feel for them, and admire adventurers, but is this a really unforeseeable outcome?

Sure it is possible to buy a liveaboard boat for $5,000 with $5,000 more to fix up

Their biggest problem was lack of experience.

I paid $2,000 for mine in 2011 and have sailed it in most all weathers for 6 years. I started sailing it 2 months after I bought it. It had been on the hard for 5 years.

Total I have $8,500 in it to this point (over 6 years) with a new Main, new outboard, bracket, solar, controller, inverter, autopilot, two bottom jobs, one topside paint job, etc

I mainly coastal cruise and do not liveaboard but it's doable.

Boat Alexander paid $1,000 for his Bristol 27 (he once said) and has sailed much of the world........

Bristol 27's do have encapsulated full keels though and are known for their toughness..

[Tessellate]

The YouTube interview by Slow Boat adds a lot of detail.
Interesting that they say they were going only 2 - 2.5 knots (note the YouTube description incorrectly says 2 miles per hour - 2 mph = 1.74 knots, which is not what they said in the video). The keel must have been really ready to fall off. Or it didn't fall off.

I think this comment (by Slow Boat) is a bit off-base: "It is somewhat common for old sailboats to have keel bolts give way and for the keel to fall off if they are not inspected regularly."
It's *not* somewhat common for keels to fall off. At least from my perception it's very rare and takes significant neglect.

Their GoFundMe has already reached $15k in donations on a 10k goal. Not surprising I guess because the media loves a good human interest drama and the news stories reached a ton of people.

It's interesting the woman was convinced they could do this by YouTube sailing channels (but the man refused to watch the videos, because he wanted to experience cruising for himself, untainted by others' experience - perhaps not a good decision in retrospect).

I've been wondering for a while now about the risk of YT channels convincing people to jump in head first with too little experience YT channels that are selling a dream present a pretty one-sided view. They only show the fun parts, or if they do show the bad parts they still gloss over the reality of the situation and present it through rose colored glasses.

There have always been people who jump in with little experience, and some come to calamity because of it, but I wonder if more of that will be happening now.