Dunked at the dock: Otter takes on water
By: Jason Roberts
Article first appeared in the April issue of 'The Potter Yachter'

Like many proud Potter owners, I typically keep  Otter, my P-15 (#555) 
docked "on the hard"--in my case, on the trailer in the yard behind my 
apartment building in Sausalito. But when my landlord scheduled construction 
on an adjoining building, I was told my parking space would be disappearing 
temporarily, and I'd have to find another spot for the trailer.

This could have posed a problem, since the city of Sausalito frowns on 
trailers and other detritus cluttering the already-crowded streets. 
Fortunately, some friends of mine live on a houseboat on nearby Issaquah 
Dock, and they were more than willing to let me moor Otter there. They 
enjoyed looking out the window and seeing their aquatic view framed by my 
little boat, and I enjoyed the convenience of sailing without launching, not 
to mention the picturesque location. So picturesque, in fact, that when a 
local TV station did a piece on the houseboat lifestyle, they ended with a 
shot lingering lovingly on Otter.

Unfortunately, the construction behind my house stretched from weeks to 
months (it's still not completed). Then came December. I flew to Louisiana 
for the holiday season...not realizing that my houseboat friends were also 
going on vacation at the same time, and that the instructions to their 
housesitters made no mention of the little boat on the back porch. I 
returned in time for the New Year's Day Potter Club meeting at the Oakland 
Yacht Club, aware that December had been stormy but unworried about 
Otter--Potters are unsinkable, right?

Then I got a call from my friends: "Um, Jason, your boat has sorta sunk."

I rushed to the houseboat and saw that they'd exaggerated...but only 
slightly. Otter wasn't fully submerged, but her insides were wetter than her 
outsides. The Storm of '96 had dumped so much water so quickly that hundreds 
of gallons of it had seeped through the hatch into the cabin, and through 
the cockpit cover into the lazarette.

Ironically, the storm had been followed by the lowest tides of the year, and 
the houseboat area was little more than a mudflat. Otter had settled deep 
into the silt, listing slightly to  port, and even at high tide it showed no 
signs of dislodging from the mire. A higher tide would probably float her 
free, but a few more gallons inside might have placed her in the realm of 
negative flotation.

Even with an electric pump it took hours to get the water out of Otter--but 
when I did, she popped happily afloat. Everything in the cabin was awash, 
but since the boat has an unfinished interior there was no real damage: a 
shorted-out boombox with batteries starting to rust,  some soggy sails that 
quickly dried. The only disconcerting loss was that of the lazarette cover, 
which had detached and floated away despite the fact that it had been locked 
shut. The contents of the lazarette had also floated away--gas can, battens, 
engine oil--but it's the lid itself that's going to be hard to replace.

What are the lessons I learned from the incident? For starters:

* I should have had the cockpit drain unplugged. This sounds idiotically 
obvious, but the fact is that the drain has stayed plugged since I bought 
Otter; the previous owner told me that it shipped water into the cockpit 
when opened, so I just assumed it didn't work and resigned myself to not 
having a self-bailing cockpit. It wasn't until I got my "Many Ways to 
Potter" packet last week that I learned the truth: the Potter's draining 
system is designed to work in low-load situations--i.e., you're supposed to 
plug it while sailing, and unplug it at the dock. In this case the debris 
from the storm would probably have clogged it up anyway...but it could have 
made a difference.

* Closed doesn't mean watertight. When a Mark I's cockpit turns into a 
bathtub, there's only a few inches of overlap between the cabin door and the 
waterline, and the space between door and surface is only about a sixteenth 
of an inch, but that's enough. The lazarette cover was resting directly on 
the overlapping rim of the cockpit, and yet it too filled up in a short span 
of time. Water seeks its level.

* Don't overestimate flotation. Another day of rain, another day of 
vacation, and Otter would be well on her way to becoming a marine obstacle. 
I've seen those brochures that prove a Potter will float even with a 
our-inch hole punched through the hull...but mud is stickier than water, and 
a goodly portion of Otter's flotation foam has disappeared over the years.

In retrospect, it's no big deal: Otter is back on the hard in my backyard 
(the landlord was understanding), and hundreds of boats suffered worse 
damage during the storm. But I've learned a lesson that'll apply even if I 
never park her at Issaquah Dock again: hope for the best, but prepare for 
the worst. Don't let faith in your boat turn into a form of 
neglect...especially in a Northern California winter, when you've got to 
watch out for the water above as well as below the waterline.