[Rhodes22-list] Nine people on the R22!

[Steven Alm]

This is our seventh season with our beloved Fandango but this was a first.
We were having a wonderful day of sailing on both the Rhodes and the Hobie
and celebrating the visit home of Judi's son Jason, who incidentally has his
500 ton license and works as a captain of a private 93 footer in Vancouver.
There were lots of guests and after dinner we went out for a beautiful
moonlit sail, all nine of us, well-oiled.  With that much weight on board
the cockpit floor is at or below the waterline so water comes up the cockpit
drain.  I've noticed this before when we've had six or seven people on board
but it was never a real problem.  A little water sloshing around bare feet
is OK and I never put a plug in the drain because I just KNOW I'd forget to
remove it at the dock and then the rain water wouldn't be able to escape.
We've also been known to bury the rail and ship water into the cockpit.

But this time the water in the cockpit was higher than it had ever been.  We
discovered that there is obviously a hole in the cockpit liner somewhere
along the edge above the floor.  We were soon standing in ankle deep water
in the cabin!  We rolled in the sails, plugged the drain and motored home.
As soon as most of the people stepped out of the boat we pulled out the plug
and the cockpit began to drain.  We have an electric bilge pump but it was
clogged which we eventually remedied in addition to hand bailing with
buckets.  The laz was also flooded.  We had the boat dried out in about a
half hour.

I have no idea how to go about finding the hole short of plugging the drain
and filling the cockpit with the hose and recreate the flood but I really
don't want to flood my cabin again!  Lesson learned:  More than four aboard
requires a drain plug despite the hazard of forgetting to remove it.

Slim