boat on rock

[cesco19]

so the boat stands on rocks in a far isle, it's not possible rech it by the sea and there are no road to bring material to here... only hand :eek:
i'm studing some solution looking for confrontation... does anyone have got any idea ???

[Grant Nelson]

Hydraulic Jacks (carry) , heavy wood planks and levers, large wood rollers (float these in)...

[D'ARTOIS]

What are we talking? A boat in the Med? So what's the difference between the tides?
50 cms?

[cesco19]

we are in the med ,south italy , and the differences between the tides is small .
I think the problem in using hidraulic jaks should be that the sea deep is really small for 100 meters from the coast ....
what do you think on using an hoist from the sea ?

[kjell]

What is the weight of the boat?

[cesco19]

the weight is 7 tons , leinght 10meters , lift 1.50 meters
thanks to everyone and sorry for my bad english

[Vega]

A Russian helicopter. They have specialized in that kind of jobs (lifting heavyweight things from difficult access places), using military equipment at a very reasonable cost.
You can find a Russian crew working in Madeira, lifting the containers of a grounded container ship. If you talk to them, perhaps they can do that in their way home. That way you would only pay the job, not the trip. How much can it cost? If you have everything ready, it will be 1-hour work.

[cesco19]

A Russian helicopter. They have specialized in that kind of jobs (lifting heavyweight things from difficult access places), using military equipment at a very reasonable cost.
You can find a Russian crew working in Madeira, lifting the containers of a grounded container ship. If you talk to them, perhaps they can do that in their way home. That way you would only pay the job, not the trip. How much can it cost? If you have everything ready, it will be 1-hour work.

vega, do you know how to contact that crew??
thanks

[D'ARTOIS]

7 tons for a 10 m boat? What material? That sounds like Ferrocement - if so - leave her. If she's steel she can take some pounding and do it by hand and jacks - logs and whatever you have as a helpforce. If you do only a metre a day, somehow you will manage. Make her asd light as possible (if she's not already robbed from everything) - no other choice than the hard way.

Paulo - from Madeira to Sicily at 2500 USD / hour ?

[BillyDoc]

You might want to look for some pneumatic dunnage bags (used to pack railroad cars, etc.). You could slip the bags under the boat and inflate them, which will lift the boat above the rocks, then set a kedge anchor (or whatever is handy) and use a chain hoist or the like to pull the boat back to sea. The boat would probably roll on the dunnage bags if they are the circular type.

Assuming that you can easily inflate your bags to say, 3 pounds per square inch pressure, then you only need 14,000/3 square inches of dunnage bags to float your boat. That works out to 4666 square inches, or three square meters of bags. You might also be able to do this with a bunch of air mattresses if you can't find actual pneumatic dunnage bags. More bags means less pressure required. A bunch of inner-tubes could also work or be helpful to fill up the spaces between rocks.

Good luck!

BillyDoc

[safewalrus]

Med tide; so only small rise and fall how did you get there in the first place - Storm? Check for damage? if there is any how much/ how much do you want to recover this boat? Insured? You'll need to be!

[cesco19]

thanks to everyone for good suggestions
the boat is in fiberglass but the keel is internal made of ferrocement, that's the matter cause it's so heavy and resistant .. i think that bags should be very interesting way for moving the boat but is a tested method ? also, the bags you say are water resistant?? thanks
Fra

[Vega]

Paulo - from Madeira to Sicily at 2500 USD / hour ?

No.... when they go back to Russia, they would have to fly near or even over Sicily, so they can just stop and do the job.

Casco 19, I can try to find out the company name, or you can fly to Madeira (lovely place to take some days of) and talk to the guys.

[Guillermo]

A weird suggestion:
If the rocks are movable and you can get a lot of manwork, you could try the Pharaoh's method: digging a channel up to your boat.

[cesco19]

Casco 19, I can try to find out the company name, or you can fly to Madeira (lovely place to take some days of) and talk to the guys.[/QUOTE]

the boat stands in an very small isle of sicily this week i'm going there, hoping the waves had'n broke it , would be difficoult reach madeira at the moment.... can you try out the name or a contact to the guys ?
thanks to all
cesco

[cesco19]

A weird suggestion:
If the rocks are movable and you can get a lot of manwork, you could try the Pharaoh's method: digging a channel up to your boat.

unfortunatly under some rocks there is a monolitic vulcanic coast.. not possible
thanks
francesco

[Vega]

Sorry, my mistake, Casco 19, that grounded boat is in Faial, also a Portuguese island, but in Azores. They will have to fly back to Russia, so I will try to find the name of the company through a friend who is in the Navy....but only monday because now everybody is going out , preparing the new year's eve.

To make emmends I have done a little internet search and found out this:

"Eastern Helicopter Operations:
The West’s most experienced operator of Eastern helicopters
Specialists in Mi-26 helicopter operations (the world’s largest helicopter)
Ability to integrate Eastern helicopters unique lifting capabilities into western technologies in oil and gas projects in North America.
Rapid response & Innovative solutions to challenging requirements. "

And...lucky you, it is an Italian company:
http://www.skylinkitaly.com/products/index.html#eastern

Give it a shot...and good luck

[BillyDoc]

Cesco,

I don’t know of anyone using pneumatic dunnage in this way, but I think I can assure you that it would work . . . if done correctly.

Let me tell you a story, as related to me by my Father, Walt W. Cushman, who was the inventor of pneumatic dunnage.

It was during World War II, and my father was working for the U.S. Army training pilots in the Washington, D.C. area. He happened to be at a train depot when they were unloading a boxcar full of canned peas, which had been mostly destroyed by improper packing in the boxcar. At that time all boxcars had a wooden lining which was used to tack timbers to and (hopefully) hold the contents of the boxcar firmly in place. Holding the contents firmly is very important when transporting by rail, because of the way trains work. The train engine does not have enough power to start the train moving if all the car couplings are pulled tight in the forward direction. So, the practice is to first back up the train and take the slack out of the couplings to rearward . . . thus producing a series of jolts as car by car the slack is eliminated for the length of the train. Then when the engine pulls forward the reverse happens: clang, clang, clang as the slack is taken up in the couples one at a time. This slack is very important to enable the train to start movement, because it effectively distributes the inertia of the cars so they are started individually instead of all at once, but puts a lot of high-G stress on the contents of the cars. Naturally, the timbers holding contents in place give it up fairly soon and break away.

This was a very serious problem during WWII, as very large percentages of war materials were being lost in transit due to damage that resulted from this problem. My Father saw the solution within minutes, and as it turned out, the Army had a research program ongoing to address this issue.

So my Father, being an engineer and a patriot, wrote to the people doing the research and attempted to explain his packing concept. He wrote that a boxcar loaded with something like canned peas could be locked firmly in place by placing an air bladder into any leftover space and inflating it to about five pounds per square inch internal pressure. He further suggested that this concept could be tested using some truck inner tubes.

Well, my Father’s suggestion was met with the usual derision afforded any new idea: “Ha, ha! This guy Cushman thinks that an old inner tube with a few pounds of air pressure is stronger than a stout timber! How dumb is this guy, anyway? But what the hell, his bad ideas make ours look good so we’ll do the test just like he says.”

So these fine engineers loaded up both ends of a boxcar for about 10 feet, all the way to the roof with cardboard cartons of canned peas and threw a bunch of inflated inner tubes on the floor in between. When they opened up the car after bouncing it back and forth a few times the peas were jumbled all over the place and mostly destroyed, as anticipated. An official test report was thereupon generated.

My Father received a copy of the report, exercised his rather considerable linguistic abilities on the subject of “engineers” with fancy degrees and their head up their, uh, in a dark place. Then he tried again with a second letter, this time explaining that the inner tubes had to be wedged between the boxes to work.

So the experiment was repeated, except that the inner tubes were carefully wedged against each other and the boxes . . . in a long row on the bottom of the boxcar. Same result.

My Father was astounded at the level of expertise demonstrated, and being a very stubborn patriot and further discovering that a major demonstration was to take place in Philadelphia in a few weeks (which is not far from Washington, D.C.), Father wrote back that he would come up and show them how to do it correctly. The Principle Investigators in this research project were delighted, of course, anticipating a great deal of fun at my Father’s expense.

So Father had a proper bladder made at his own expense to fit the cross sectional area of the boxcar being used, which was something like 8 feet wide by 10 feet tall. He shipped this bladder to Philadelphia with instructions to use it and suggested an inflation pressure of 5 psi. As chance would have it in these things, his bladder was consigned to a worker attached to the project that was unencumbered by any degrees . . . and so was free to consider and actually understand the concepts involved. This worker deployed the peas and the bladder exactly right . . . almost.

My Father was delayed and couldn’t get to Philadelphia in time for the demonstration so they went ahead without him. When the bladder was inflated . . . in front of a reviewing stand containing the CEO’s of three major railroads plus a lot of Army “brass” . . . there was the sudden and terrifying sound of a cannon going off, followed by the transverse movement of one end of the boxcar in question (steel construction) and hundreds of cans of peas traveling at a high rate of speed. Several individuals came very close to severe injuries from flying cans and assorted shrapnel.

My Father arrived just after the explosion.

When they investigated this incident, they found that when the pressure gage used read 5 psi, the actual pressure was 14 psi. “So what,” you might think. Fourteen pounds isn’t much. BUT, we are applying this pressure over an area of 8 feet by 10 feet, which is 11,520 square inches with 14 pounds of pressure from each and every one of those square inches . . . for a total pressure on the end of the boxcar of 161,280 pounds! More than enough to blow the end of the car out and scatter a pile of peas.

The people who had been joking about the crazy man who thought an air bladder was stronger than a stout wooden timber were no longer laughing. The CEO’s were also quite impressed by the demonstration, as were the military representatives . . . and to make an already long story short (and skipping the part where the Principle Investigators of the project later tried to take full credit for the approach) pneumatic dunnage is now commonly used for all sorts of packing problems and will certainly lift your boat.

Typical pneumatic dunnage is made up of rubberized “cloth” sheets and is very tough and quite waterproof, so it should be able to float your boat with no problem at all. The trick is in having enough area to supply the needed lifting force without, at the same time, needing excessive pressure. As I said before, if you can’t obtain some “real” pneumatic dunnage bags you can probably get away with using some of the inflatable mattresses that are made with rubberized cloth.

I suggest you try an experiment if you have an old inflatable mattress. While it is un-inflated slip it under your car or something heavy and stack lumber or anything convenient on it to take up the space . . . and then blow it up. You will probably be able to lift that car with the pressure from your own lungs (most people can produce at least one pound of pressure per square inch with their lungs, and if the mattress is 3 feet by 6 feet that works out to 2,592 pounds of lift). If you were to use mattresses for your boat you would need several, but that is still a lot cheaper than some other approaches. If you are reasonably fit, you could probably get the boat off the rocks by yourself using mattresses and a hand pump to inflate them, plus your anchor and (hopefully) an on-board winch. Once you get the boat to the water you can use the mattresses to keep it floating with the keel more or less horizontal to accommodate the shallow water you mentioned. It would be wet work, to be sure, but it seems do-able to me.

Bill

[safewalrus]

Guillermo has a good point, anything else is too expensive for what you have! Either that or start building a new one! and learn about taking Risks (OH! you've just done that!)

Dig or blow out your channel, lighten your boat as much as possible (take anything that MOVES out of the boat) run a long hawser around the boat, grease a few long rollers under the boat to the water. Secure you hawser to a small tug well out at sea; and HEAVE (praying is also useful, it might not do anything but the man upstrairs May be in a good mood, and help!!) ;) Oh yeah and shove a few of BillyDoc's 'airbeds' under the boat may not work but there again, you obviously want this boat badly

just a thought Bill but whilst your Old man was wasting all these bloody peas there where kids in England desperate for a pea (?) 'cos the nasy ol' Germans kept sinking thwe ships and the nasty ol' Yanks kept blowing them up

Happy and Prosperous (pea feee) New Year to you all

[PAR]

I've removed boats from some pretty nasty locations. I've seen them remove from worse, call a salvage company. It could be lifted off by barge mounted crane or chopper. It could be handed off, with warps some tugs and lots of cussing (probably the cheapest method) Insuring a reasonably clean path to the water shouldn't be to difficult, with plywood,heavy timbers, grease and more cussing. You've already got damage, have pumps handy and don't get to bent out of shape when more damage occurs during the refloating. I don't see the difficulty here, most any reasonable salvage outfit can snatch that boat off those rocks pretty quickly. Sure, there's going to be damage, they'll make you sign a release form for just that reason, but it's very doable. The longer you wait, the more damage will happen to the boat.

[safewalrus]

Hey PAR from the picture would you risk your gear on it? Salvage is done for MONEY. That wee boat don't look worth it! Sorry top be so negative and to Cesco it probably is Worth it! But to a salvage company (using barge crane - water is too shallow to get close in; chopper - these cost real money to deploy (OK for governments who already own choppers but to the average 'joe' your talking mega bucks.

I'm afraid the choice is "grease the ways and pull". Having said that IF you got the money anything is possible, however if you got the money you wouldn't be messing about on this long drawn out farce, you'd be moving the boat! As you said the longer the wait the more damage is done! Don't prolong the agony, take what you can and replan. Put it down to experience.

[PAR]

I agree Safewalrus, I would declare her salvage from the beginning if I was there and work out something with him later. I still think it can be levered, cursed and bitched back into the drink. A couple of hefty power yachts, some 1" Samson yacht braid, a few hundred dollars of the thickest plywood available, several 5 gallon buckets of grease, some 4 x 4 or bigger timbers and lots of beer for the crews should get it done.

Honestly, it doesn't look that bad. It's not far from the water's edge, several rocks, a handy higher then usual tide. If necessary he could build a skid/cradle kind of thing to minimize damage. I'd spend a few days there just clearing rocks and checking depths, building a ramp/ways/skid/etc., looking for a reasonably clean path off and out.

The question would be how much is the yacht worth to this owner.

[safewalrus]

PAR totally in agreement, your (our?) method IS the cheapest and thus only way to go but as we've both said depends on what it's worth to the owner! Having said that how much will it cost to get the vessel back in one piece after it's been dragged kicking and screaming back to port (providing she makes it of course - she will as long as the people doing the job know what they're about, but they are going to need some kinda reward!)

[devindamarko]

Iam going thru something similar myself at the moment, this might be a little out there but its an idea, clear the rock out of the way, engineer a slip and slide we played on as kids with plastic liner or tarps, use soap and water or bentinite used in directional boring readly available (slipery like jelly). Hook up a block and tackle to a rock in the water if you can find one. And hopfully she will slide easly.
Like I said its an out there idea but your prize would be worth it.

Mark

[Enzo Mlinari]

We can help you to get the boat afloat. Costs about 10.000 € .contact us: vitruvius2@hotmail.com.

[cesco19]

I just come back from the isle , lot of sadness .
with hard mistral of those days the boat has been totally broken ,seems like explosed. notthing to do
thank to you all ... unluky it was not possible do notthing
i can only work hard to buy another boat the coming years
happy new year to you all

[safewalrus]

Hey 'cesco' don't be down remember the good times! Also of course when you get the New Boat think of all the modifications you will add! You will get back, maybe not soon but you will!! And it will be better next time

[Guillermo]

I just come back from the isle , lot of sadness .
with hard mistral of those days the boat has been totally broken ,seems like explosed. notthing to do
thank to you all ... unluky it was not possible do notthing
i can only work hard to buy another boat the coming years
happy new year to you all

Sorry about it, cesco19.
May I suggest you to involve yourself in a building or restoring project? That will take sadness away.
All the best.

[PAR]

Truly sad news. I hope you can recover from this tragedy in the family quickly. It does help a great deal to find another and work on getting her into the latest rendition of your perfect cruising yacht, incorporating all the things learned (good and bad) on your previous yachts. You're next will be a better boat, more suited to your needs I'll bet. Best of luck to you.

[BillyDoc]

I am also very sorry for your loss, Cesco. Perhaps your luck will change and you will find a better boat soon. I certainly hope so!

Bill

[nero]

On the bright side. You can now easily salvage the motor and parts needed for your next boat.

[safewalrus]

I can see why your namesake was good on the violin! :cool:

[cesco19]

tank to all you for comprension and help, may be i'm going to build a small one , for this time with more solid rudder, this one ended on coast cause it broke during very bad time ...
see you
cesco

[Wellydeckhand]

R:( I:( P:(
I had the same problem and hard time but manage to built 7 beautiful boat back...... so be happy luck always on people who love boat and ship.