There’s a hole in my speedboat, dear Liza, dear Liza…

I’ve been working hard on Fridays and weekends these last couple of weeks repairing boats for a local Sea Cadet unit. It’s been quite good fun – fifteen years ago I did much the same when I was a cadet there. It’s sad to see now boats I rebuilt from the hull up then languishing in undergrowth now full of rot. But the powerboat still looks okay, especially after I helped rebuild the starter moter, alternator and scraped and painted the hull. There’s only one problem though: there’s a hole in the bottom. We found it when tipping some water into the bilges to test the pump.

Water started trickling from part of the keel under the diesel tank. I tested the spot with my little finger and found I could push it through inside the hull, resulting in a torrent of water. Oh dear! Well, better to find it now than when it gets taken up to the lake. It’s being left to dry out before I have to clean out and fill the hole with resin. Grrr! And that was the boat I had worked