Avoid that Sinking Feeling
YOU MIGHT THINK YOU'LL NEVER NEED A TOW AFLOAT, BUT THE FACT IS TOWING SERVICES OFFER MORE THAN JUST GETTING YOU BACK TO A DOCK
We all tend to think of towing services in terms of getting a disabled boat back to a dock or other safe harbor. But, as I learned several years ago, there are additional benefits to having ready access to towboat services.
For years, my wife Susan and I half-joked about how, for us, the Miami Boat Show was a kind of permanent harbinger of bad luck. That was because it seemed like some form of domestic crisis hit us each year during the time I was tied up at the show: one year a sewage back-up at our house, another an A/C failure, then one of our cars refusing to start, and one of our dogs breaking her leg. The litany of misfortune that visited us concurrently with the Miami show was long and tedious.
During one show several years ago, I picked up a voicemail from Susan, who informed me our boat was sinking at our dock. A neighbor across the canal called to tell her that the boat was listing badly and looked to him as though she was taking on water. And when she went down to the boat, she found that water inside our 29-foot twin-diesel sportfish was just over the cabin sole and looked as though it might soon threaten the diesel engines.
In those days, the cellphone activity at a major boat show sometimes overwhelmed the transmission abilities of the local towers, so my efforts to get back to Susan were not going well. And all I could do was stew over what might be the cause of our boat potentially taking a deep dive. We hadn’t hit anything, and I doubted that any of our underwater hose fittings could have given way. From Susan’s message, it sounded to me as though one of our dripless prop shaft glands had given up the ghost — especially since I had noticed one acting up a couple of weeks prior. With the press of work at the time, I had decided our automatic bilge pump could handle the minor inflow of water without breaking a sweat. Consequently, I had not paid any mind to what seemed a minor problems. Well, so much for exercising good judgement.
To make a long story shorter, being unable to call Susan back, all I could do was sit in Miami Beach and stew over how much it was going to cost in terms of time, effort, and money to salvage a boat sunk at her dock. Fortunately, Susan is pretty calm, clear-headed, and self-sufficient, as well as pretty experienced after seven years of live-aboard cruising on our 18 ton motorsailer. So she didn’t really need my help.
By the time I managed to get through to her by cellphone, she had dealt with the problem and averted disaster. It had occurred to her that towing services often have to bring a distressed vessel back to a dock and set a pump watch until the vessel could be hauled or otherwise serviced. So, they must, she reasoned, have access to some portable, gasoline-powered water evacuation pumps. She, consequently, called around to a couple of local towing services and arranged with one of them to come to our dock with pumping equipment. They were just arriving as my call back to Susan finally got through.
The tow service guys had arrived in less twenty minutes. They quickly pumped the boat dry, then left an oversize electric sump pump running to handle any further water ingress until I could get home to help Susan deal with what could have turned out to be disastrous for the boat. The cost was reasonable, especially in view of the timeliness of their response. And was, anyway, covered by our boat insurance under a clause concerning oblgation to mitigate potential damage.
In those days, the availability of towing services for pleasure craft was not as well developed as it is now. Today, you can purchase annual towing service (effectively a form of insurance) at a pretty reasonable cost. Indeed, you can even bundle towing and related services with a boater’s association membership or with a boat insurance policy.
In general, if you have to call for even a single tow in a two-year period, you will will likely recover your annual contract expenditures. To my mind, that makes towing coverage one of the best values available in the recreational marine sector. And make no mistake — if you have to order up an emergency bilge water pump-out, you’ll forever consider it money well spent.
— Phil Friedman
Text Copyright © 2024 by Phil Friedman ― All Rights Reserved.
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