sailing casita

When we purchased ‘Imi Loa last March her previous owner, Terry, turned her over to us lock, stock, and barrel. Though Terry wasn’t a bachelor, we got the feeling he had used the boat as his “bachelor pad away from home”. There was little evidence of a female presence and there were lots and lots of plastic and paper dishes, a variety of novelty bottle openers, a not-quite-empty bottle of rum, a random camping chair, an ancient bicycle pump, and lost of miscellaneous trash. We tossed out a lot of stuff but tucked in among the junk were some useful items. Things like replacement seals for our portlights, a bosun’s chair, a sea anchor/parachute, several safety harnesses, a wind scoop, etc…  But the real jem was a set of Plugmaster wooden plugs.

Though I was a boating novice, I had fortunately read enough books about sailing and cruising to realize the value of these wooden plugs, otherwise they may have gone the way of the bicycle pump and camping chair. Now some of you (non-boating, non-boat book reading) readers may be wondering what use I have for these wooden plugs. Well (according the to people who write about such matters) every boat should have a set of wooden plugs to hammer into a thru-hull in case of a seacock failure. In case any of you are wondering what a thru-hull or seacock is I found a nice drawing to help clarify the matter.

Since many thru-hulls are below the waterline the boat could easily sink if both the hose and the seacock were to fail, which is where the wooden plugs come in. For such an important item you don’t want just any old wooden plugs so I was thrilled to see our plugs came with a warranty. But then I read the fine print…

Oh well, at least they were free 🙂