Wooden boats which have been out of the water?

[frahkn]

I was at Alvecote yesterday (just for a few hours) and I noticed a boat which was sinking on the tow path side, opposite the 'Barlow'. Some guys were attempting (with no success) to pump it out.

 

The story in the pub was that it had been craned in only the previous day after a long spell out of the water.

 

Opinion amongst the lunchtime cognoscenti was that wooden boats always leak in such circumstances and that they should, as a matter of course, be sunk for a couple of weeks when re-launched.

 

This seemed a council of despair to me but these guys appeared to have about 500 years of boating experience between them.

 

Is it not possible to caulk a wooden boat so that it floats first time?

 

Frank.

[Naughty Cal]

We have a pal who lives at Burton Waters who "rescues" old wooden yachts.

 

His last one was out of the water when we were last year. He was relaunching at the same time we did.

 

A few days before relaunch he stuck a hose pipe in the bilge and left it running.I had never seen a more leaky boat!

 

The yard relaunched it at the end of the day and left it to "sink" on the slipway. The next day they left pumps in it to get the water back out. It was left next to the slipway for few days in case it needed getting out again relying on its own bilge pumps

 

Once the wood had swollen up again it was fine. Stayed afloat quite happily.

 

It currently resides in Wells Harbour on a floating Buoy mooring.

[dmr]

Caulking to float first time is not a good idea.

Neither is the emergency measure of sliding a box of ash over the outside to suck ash into the gaps.

When the timber gets suitably wet it should expand to its correct size with no gaps.

If you fill the gaps first then when the wood expands some very big stresses will be created.

Well that's what I was told by a man who knows these things, and after a week or so the boat did become watertight just like he said it would!

 

............Dave

[stagedamager]

What was the boat, a wooden narrowboat or cruiser?

[frahkn]

What was the boat, a wooden narrowboat or cruiser?

It was a narrowboat, about 35' or so, I didn't see it in detail and wouldn't have realised it was wooden if I had not been told so in the Barlow.

[The Bagdad Boatman (waits)]

depends if it is planked or plywood construction.

[Paul G2]

Some wooden hulls are designed to be "stuffed", which is the process of forcing stuffing material - kind of a fluffy rope, for lack of a better description - into the space between the planks. Nevertheless, even a well-stuffed boat will leak when put in the water dry.

 

Wood expands when it gets wet. With planked hulls you need to leave room for expansion, which means the boat will leak until the wood swells. When I was a kid we had a plywood cruiser that we kept at home on a trailer. Even the plywood boat had room for expansion; where the hull met the keel leaked like a sieve until it swelled. We would put about a foot of water in the boat for a week or so before we meant to use it and it would swell up nicely and stay watertight.

[stagedamager]

I can think of no better place to have problems with a wooden narrowboat though. Ade will sort if if required!!!!

[Seti-Yeti]

My Broads cruiser, Tiffany, was a carvel planked displacement wooden hull. It was out for 18 months and got a good summer baking so was a dry as you can get them. I re-caulked the obvious degraded runs and used caulking cotton - indeed, it looks just like fluffy rope!

 

Lifted and hauled by truck, jiggled and flexed all the way from Cheshire to Norfolk then dipped in. FOUNTAINS!

 

Out comes the magic ingredient..... caulking cotton with grease squidged into it. Prod it into the worst geysers with a screwdriver and Robert is your parent's brother. A properly sized auto bilge pump should keep pace - it is doesn't, it's not properly sized!

[NMEA]

I have never yet seen a n older plank on frame boat that had been out for more than a couple of weeks that didn't take some time to "take up". It is perfectly normal and I think anybody that took such a boat away from the power pumps whilst it took up is asking for trouble, there are regularly such boats launched at South Dock and they are generally hose fed on the hard for a couple of days and held afloat in the slings for about 24 hours with pumps and then moved to a mooring on shore power and rely on their own DC pumps with charger, the process can span a couple of weeks until they fully take up and even then some minor leaks are almost inevitable on older boats.

[John V]

You can caulk with Sikoflex instead of oakum and putty before putting in the water, it's flexible enough that it "bulges" in the seams as the planks take up, couple of guys I know with wooden boats swear by it rather than swear at it ( traditional materials)

[Seti-Yeti]

Aye, 'tis fine stuff. You need the patience of a saint to apply it nicely though.

[sharpness]

When I was a lad, half a century ago, in Ilfracombe as there were no grockles about the trip boats & others, 23 -30 ft open

clinker built boats were taken out of the water & stored on the harbourside over the winter. In the spring they were put back in

the water & with wellies on we used to scull them back across the harbour as quickly as possible and put them on the mooorings & get out quick before they sank. Then when the tide was out we went down & took the plugs out & let the water out. After a couple

of days they were fine & apart from rain, tight & dry as a bone.

 

Steve

[twbm]

The NCB used to leave boats day boats sunk until they needed them, else when they loaded them they went straight down.

[saltysplash]

I used to dry Dock my old tub once a year for two weeks for maintainance and she never leaked on refloating. I suppose two weeks wasnt long enough for her to dry out fully.

 

She was remarkably flexable though, as once she was high and dry sitting on her keel non of the internal doors would close untill she was refloated and the wood settled back into its orginal position.

 

[ROBDEN]

When I was into the lumpy water stuff, I had a clinker built Mapleleaf. Whenever that went back in

the water - even after a few days out for anti-fouling - it would take in a lot of water.

Very frightening the first time.

 

Rob....

[Guest]

The NCB used to leave boats day boats sunk until they needed them, else when they loaded them they went straight down.

I was going to ask that question: What happened if a boat hadn't been loaded for some time?" but you have answered it for me! Thanks

[hughc]

Some years ago the last extant Cromford canal narrow boat, a wooden maintenance craft or ice breaker in reasonable and certainly restorable condition,lay-and had lain for many years- submerged by High Peak wharf . This, against advice, was removed by either the Arkwright Society or Derbyshire County Council and placed on hard standing at Cromford Wharf. In spite of offers , by people who did know what they were doing , to preserve and restore the boat it very quickly dried out and the woodwork disintegrated until all that was left was the ironwork. Regards, HughC.

[PaulG]

I was at Alvecote yesterday (just for a few hours) and I noticed a boat which was sinking on the tow path side, opposite the 'Barlow'. Some guys were attempting (with no success) to pump it out.

 

The story in the pub was that it had been craned in only the previous day after a long spell out of the water.

 

Opinion amongst the lunchtime cognoscenti was that wooden boats always leak in such circumstances and that they should, as a matter of course, be sunk for a couple of weeks when re-launched.

 

This seemed a council of despair to me but these guys appeared to have about 500 years of boating experience between them.

 

Is it not possible to caulk a wooden boat so that it floats first time?

 

Frank.

I used to help out at the local boat yard back in the days of my mis-spent youth.

 

We often had to launch clinker built boats that had been out of the water for some time.

 

Our method was to leave the cradle under the boat after we'd launched it (just in case) and have an electric pump running,

 

Then we had an old tin colander on the end of a broomstick, which we filled with sawdust, and ran this up and down along the hull underwater.

 

The sawdust was sucked into the joints between the planks, where it expanded and sealed it up. On a good day, the hull could be reasonably dry within half an hour or so of launching.

[captain birdseye]

When I was a young lad I was told wooden narrowboats should be left to fill with water for a day for every week they had been out of the water for. No matter how well you Caulk it will always leak when you put it back in the water.