We moved Backfin to her new spot at Fairwinds Marina the beginning of the summer and unfortunately she’s largely been a dock princess. It’s been great that she’s so accessible for making repairs and updates, but we still need to find the time to use her for her intended purpose.
Towards the end of the season we had our annual tropical storm scare and as a result I made every effort to keep her safely in her slip with doubled up lines, extra fenders, dockline snubbers and adjustments such that she could move freely in the slip regardless of the tidal state. Unfortunately even with the best intentions things still went sideways… literally. With constant waves and wind on the beam, the deck hardware took a beating which resulted in a failure I’ve never seen before… It broke a cleat. The constant thrashing also broke the snubbers and chaffed thru a backup dockline. Thankfully the other measures in place kept the resulting damage to a minimum (she rubbed against the leeward piling for several hours in the aftermath).
I managed to re-secure the boat in the slip using other deck hardware for the time being until I could return with a replacement cleat and the appropriate tools to extract the broken hardware. Once complete, I spun the boat around so she’s now stern-in which will hopefully help when the waves are coming from the longest fetch (through the Gibson Island channel).
Next up will be to replace the damaged rubrail once things warm up a bit in the spring and hopefully use the boat for what she is here for.
