Hi everyone, and thanks to all who have patted our backs. I will try to explain what happened over that past few days as best as I can. This was truly one of the best sailing experiences I have had and I wasn't even sailing.
I talked with Knothead several times on the
phone over the weekend and it was obvious that he needed some help as soon as possible, so I volunteered to drive up on Monday. He offered me a place on his couch, so I loaded up and showed up Monday around low tide.
After seeing the boat in person, and the tasks at hand, I could see we had our jobs cut out for us. We found a
storage unit for Jay's stuff that was donated, and a local paid for a couple of days of U-haul truck
rental. The rest of the evening was taken up by removing as much stuff as we could while still leaving the cockroaches behind. This boat was not a healthy boat. We set 5 bug bombs off and left it for the night to return on Tuesday to hopefully remove the rest of Jays stuff.
On Tuesday morning we floated a dingy out and removed the rest of Jays stuff, while Knothead and his partner stegthened the
mast and
rigging. We made many, many trips. We had local volunteers who also helped. We filled a large U-haul truck with nasty junk. Very little, IMHO was worth anything. Knothead, described it to many people as the show "Horders: Burried Alive" on steroids. There was still some stuff on the boat, but anything that weighed more than a few pounds was removed. Tuesday at low tide we had about 6 or so volunteers with shovels, and using a gas powered
pump we removed as much sand as we could and the boat stared to lean. We also tied Knotheads
sail boat to the
mast with a line and started pulling. The boat was leaning about 15-20 degrees.
Today, we got an early start. Knothead slept on his boat last night, and we had 6 or so sailboats anchored about 75 yards off in the bay. We then ran as many lines to the anchored sailboats and started pulling with winchs while waiting for high tide. The boat started leaning more and more as more lines and tension were applied. We also tied an old dingy to the masthead filled with
water. We also had 20 or 30 people show up willing to push, which is what you saw on the vidieo. Without all the volunteers who pushed and the sailboats with winches pulling, this would never have happened. It was a collective effort and all who helped should be thanked.
So after much effort and cheers the boat broke free. Once the boat was in about 5 ft of
water we were able to pull it off the sandy bottem with a
power boat.
I would like to personally thank Steve (Knothead) and his wife and all the unnamed volenteers of Gulfport. They were a true delight and new lifelong friends. Also, if you ever need ANY
rigging work on your boat, or even
advice please call Steve or SSMR for all your
rigging needs. He will do a great job at a very reasonable
price. (Sorry Steve I just had to put that in there.)
I also would like to say that during this whole process, I was extremely doubtfull that we would be successful, but Knotheads faith never wavered. The boat does have a 6.5 ft to 7ft
draft and once was a blue
water boat. It is very heavy.
After pulling the boat out, we then had 2 50lb anchors and 100 ft of chain with 1 inch
rode that we anchored to boat with. It should hold it for a while......?
Thanks agin Knothead (Steve)
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