Ketch Aground at Palm Beach Sailing Club

[offline]

Arrived today at the Palm Beach Sailing Club and saw this poor guy hard aground on a receding tide.

I must say that he was not a club member and he didn't have a towboat membership. He also didn't have a working engine or a rudder.

He passed the time cleaning his bottom with a machete. I think he may be there for a while.

[Kettlewell]

Maybe he deliberately careened her to clean the bottom?

[offline]

Originally Posted by Kettlewell

Maybe he deliberately careened her to clean the bottom?

Nope...he did take the opportunity to clean his starboard bottom but this wasn't intentional.. Boat was also taking on some water...

[minaret]

Looks like a schooner to me.

[Astrid]

Yup, looks like a schooner to me too. Curious that he didn't kedge out to deeper before the tide went out.

[maxingout]

Very odd. Flat seas. He must not have tried very hard to get himself ungrounded unless he was inside a giant sand bar.

[Miniyot]

Something is odd somewhere. Did anyone else notice the line running from the stern to the beach? Seems to look tight to me, as if he intentionally grounded it but it leaned the wrong way.
Either that OR he just wanted his boat close to shore and didn't plan on the tide going out.
There HAS to be more to this story.

[offline]

Miniyot

He tried tieing off the starboard to try to stabilize the boat and bring it a bit more upright. He was taking water into his port-side portlights. At first he tried tying off to a palm tree and then moved it over to a concrete seawall support column.

[Kettlewell]

That was some time ago--what happened to the boat?

[Hudson Force]

Originally Posted by maxingout

Very odd. Flat seas. He must not have tried very hard to get himself ungrounded unless he was inside a giant sand bar.

Not too odd, these are not "seas". This is the lagoon called Lake Worth that includes the ICW and lies between Palm Beach and West Palm Beach. What's odd is that the schooner was allowed to lean away from the beach. It's a simple task to influence the lean after grounding in calm water on a sandy beach. When we used to careen for a "do it youself" bottom job, we would tie a line to a halyard from the masthead where, with great leverage, we could easily lean the boat to shore and not risk being swamped.

[offline]

When I went ot the club yesterday the boat was off the beach and was once again anchored.

He's decided to sell the boat after this little incident.