Missing aluminum boat

[1pc@atime]

A buddy of mine in PA called me this morning to tell me he found his boat, that he thought someone had stolen last year.
To give a bit of a back story, the boat never left his farm, it was used to service the koi ponds where they raise fish. He normally just drags the boat up on the bank and ties it off to a tree but at some point the one boat disappeared without a trace.

He said his nephew was on the lake in his canoe to fix an aerator pump, and spotted something i the water.
Apparently its the missing boat, sitting in about 15ft of water partway down a steep drop off in the water on the far side of the pond. The boat was a Sea King 14ft. I remember when he or his dad bought them, they got a half dozen of them, one for each pond. They look like rebadged Starcraft boats.

Getting it out will be fund but I'm leaning toward just lowering a grappling hook and winching it out with the truck.

He figures either someone shoved it into the lake, or used it and left the plug out and it sank, or maybe the wind just blew in into the water and it drifted across the lake and sunk unnoticed over the winter.

I told him to make sure he gets a hook on it somehow so it don't slide down any deeper, I now that pond is deeper than a 25ft anchor rope can reach in the middle.

What gets me is that I thought most modern boats couldn't sink, I would have figured that the foam blocks in the seats and bow would have kept it off the bottom?

I'm pretty sure those boats had white polystyrene blocks for flotation with three of them inside the metal bench seats.

 

[airshot]

Depends in how old it is. Back in 63 I bought a new smoker craft Jon boat that had no foam in it, but in 64, my parents bought a Mirro craft that did have foam under the seats. So...sometime around those years they started using it. If those boats were before 1960 or there about they may not have flotation.

 

[seahorse]

I have a 1958 Grumman Canoe that has two huge chunks of polystyrene foam at each end, and my 1963 16ft Starcraft Starmist had foam strips beneath the floor.
I think unless its an old steel hull row boat from the 40's or 50's I'd sort of expect it to have some sort of flotation, but that flotation may have also been just trapped air.

(I rebuilt an old Waterworks trihull years ago that was from 1961, its only flotation was a 4" chunk of white foam blued to the underside of the bow deck, and two basically air tight fiberglass tubes at the top of each gunwale which a former owner at some point had drilled through to install rod holders. I replaced them with two 6" diameter 9ft long PVC tubes sealed on both ends secured with fiberglass low enough to allow rod holders.

If that were my boat that I had to fish out of the drink, I'd be cutting up a few sheets of closed cell foam to fill the seats with.

 

[1pc@atime]

From what I gather its fairly new, bought around the time there were Jefferson Wards stores all over the area. I think he said he bought them all when they were closing up in the 80's. The inside of those boats look the same as my 90's model Starcraft SF which has huge chunks of foam in the seat boxes.
Its why I can't figure out how its just sitting so far down in the water like that.

I just hope they get hold of it before it sinks, all of those ponds there are super deep, formed when someone closed off both ends of a deep v shaped depression between two hills. The one pond there we were allowed to fish in as kids, it was deeper than anyone could dive in the middle, of course we were 10 or 11 at the time, but I'd venture to guess most are over 50ft deep, if not more. Considering how steep the slope is on each side, the could be far deeper, as the house and barn there are a good 75 ft higher than the pond's edge, so is the far side of the point, which is a rocky cave riddled wooded area that goes about 1/2 mile before the next road on the other side of the hill. We walked that area as kids, but you could barely get up and through that woods even then and there were huge caverns and drops deep into the rocks there. Considering its near some of the big tourist caves there, chances are the whole area is like that.

Not to mention the snakes there. We used to walk around with a bucket and a grabber and fill buckets with baby copper heads and timber rattlers in the 70's, not to mention the ponds were full of various brown water snakes. I hated snakes but used to help gather them so they could be dumped off far away to hep reduce the population around the houses there. I don't think I'm ad dumb or brave these days, but I'm also not as quick either.

I'm hoping they somehow manage to get it out of there, I'm not looking forward to dealing with it because I'm sure the area is likely all grown over by now, no one has tended to those ponds in ages other than to keep the aerators running and the feeder filled. The last time I was up there there were trees all around the ponds and one was over its banks onto the road by about 20ft.
They had gotten a large tractor stuck trying to cut down the weeds near the one pond.

The foam must be soaked for it to sink, or somewhere along the line it got removed or it fell apart. I have seen that stuff break up in the past, just not completely.

 

[lckstckn2smknbrls]

Is there a local scuba dive team or club that could help retrieve the boat?

 

[FuzzyGrub]

Field mice love to tunnel through the stuff. Might have contributed to the foam becoming waterlogged.

 

[oilsmoke]

If the place is loaded with snakes there shouldn't be a ton of field mice around.
I lived in PA for a number of years and in the higher elevation areas there were lots of snakes, the local college would often come out and get permission to collect snakes for their study program

When I first moved there, It was a cool, foggy early September morning and still dark yet when I got down there to fish for a some breakfast. I caught a few nice panfish fairly quickly and
as the sun came up, and the weather started to clear up I figured it was time to head back to the house. When I turned around, the grass field I had walked through to get down to the pond was covered in snakes of all types. They had all come out to sun themselves. The one neighbor came along on his golf cart laughing at me, saying now you know why no one fishes there.

It turned out that moth ball flakes do wonders as snake repellent. The problem is that after clearing out the field and making the snakes feel less welcome down at the pond I started finding them in the basement and house. It took me a year to get them under control, but never fully did even after 6 years. I sold the place to a strange woman who wanted a place to be 'closer to nature'. I knew she was the buyer the instant she called a snake she pulled out of the wood pile 'cute'.

Polystyrene will absorb water, nearly all foam will if kept wet long enough. I shoveled over 500 lbs or wet, soggy white foam out of my '65 Duratech years ago, it sat under a leaky roof for decades full of leaves and tree dirt. When I ripped up what was left of the floor the foam chunks, although mostly intact, were almost too heavy to lift. I was using a shovel to slide them up like chunks of clay and tossing them out of the boat. I had towed the boat home with my 1980 F100, and it felt like I was like dragging a sled behind me.

The trailer was nearly bottomed out. I couldn't believe how much water the foam had held. The wood deck was rotted into basically wet mulch, and the transom panel had fallen off the transom.

I redid the deck in a 1968 Starcraft Holiday, that boat sat the same way for years but it foam was like new beneath all the rotten wood.

If it were me, I'd just use a hook to get hold of the boat, if its deep water in PA, its probably cold too. Those sort of ponds are not always a safe place to dive either. The pond we had at the one place there tended to hover around 55 degrees even in the summer. A lot of those ponds are spring fed, chances are that's the case if its that clear. Ours had spots that looked like they were only a few feet deep but what your were looking at was 15ft down. The bottom of our pond was also slick, mostly from the fall leaves that were rotting on the bottom, it was a like grease on rocks. Then the summer brought algae too.

The boat won't feel heavy on the rope while its submerged, the water weight is neutral and the hull itself is lighter in the water than on land, its when your lifting it clear of the water that you need to be careful about the weight, if its full of water, that water now becomes 8lbs or so per gallon and its easy to rip a bow eye off or tear through the hull. Go slow and let it drain as it clears the surface and get a second line on it as soon as possible just in case Once empty, it may even float long enough to be towed across the pond and to somewhere more accessible to remove it.

 

[MrGiggles]

Boats of that age likely had styrofoam. Squirrels and other rodents have probably relocated most of whatever foam was in there originally.

Best to get it out as soon as possible, once it gets silted in recovery will be much more difficult.

 

[mirrocraft16]

My 1999 Starcraft has styrofoam in it, each seat is filled but the rear seat has a full length livewell cut into it from the factory, the mid seats are a split bench, so only a 9x12x8 chunk in the right side and a battery box in the left, and the front bench, about 39" wide has a solid full width chunk of foam in it. The rear of the boat is pretty much lacking any serious flotation unless the small amount of foam along the sides of the livewell and that right middle half bench is enough to float it. I'm not sure what's under the floor, it may have foam in there but I've not had to replace it yet so I may never know.
It would surprise me if it floated if it got swamped.

 

[Crazyboat]

If there's a good run before the bank, I'd just get a chain on her and tow quick towards the bank. You might be able to have the boat surface before reaching land. If not just tow her slow and steady.

 

[1pc@atime]

I made the drive there again over the weekend, I was able to borrow a larger farm tractor with a loader on it from the neighbor and we managed to get a homemade grappling hook onto the boat where it sat, hooking it just over the bow plate. We pulled ran a rope between two trees on that side of the pond, and ran the rope up and over part of an old block and tackle, then pulled the rope with the tractor slowly, when the boat was above the surface, we were able to let it drain out enough that it would float, then using a hand pump I emptied it the rest of the way. The worst part was that the boat was covered in slippery green slime from sitting there so long. I then just paddled it back to an area where there's no trees and sandy area along the bank. From there I tied a rope to the bow eye and pulled it slowly up the grass hill to the driveway with my truck.
We rolled it over and found no damage. In fact it don't even have a drain plug. The consensus is that either someone pushed it into the water, or the pond got so flooded at some point the boat floated and drifted to the other side and eventually filled with rain and sunk. We could find no leaks. It has foam but only a single 4" chunk under the small bow plate, about a 20" wide trianle of styrofoam. The foam was not water logged at all, it just isn't enough to float the boat i guess. The foam is trapped in place by a couple of alumimum tabs spot welded to the bottom of the bow plate that have a strap riveted across the bottom of the foam block on two sides.
The bench seats are aluminum over foam or wood, riveted to side brackets, and the transom is a single 1x6 board across the back.
I really thought the boat was a Sea King but I could find no brand name on it. If there's a HIN number on the back its buried in 20 coats of paint. The seats looked like 70's era Starcraft as did the hull but the corner caps are smaller than on a Starcraft, and I don't know of any later model Starcraft boats that had a bow plate. The bow plate reminds me of some of the Mirrocraft models back them. He swears they all came from Jefferson Ward in the early 80's and I seem to remember his dad buying them there too.
The lower seat boxes may also have foam but their not filled like my 1999 model. The boat is light, two of us lifted it on to a small trailer to haul it up to the barn to give it a good pressure washing.

The rest is up to them. I don't want it and I'm not looking for another project so chances are it'll get washed and put back down by the pond with the others. Hopefully it gets tied to a tree or something this time.