♫There’s a hole in my boat, my boat, my boat!♫
♫There’s a hole in my boat, my boat, my boat! ♫ ♬
Ever have one of those days when you get that sinking feeling? Your friends have left you behind? And the river has just torn you a new one?
I’m going to assume this is for a river or lake trip, and you just need to patch the hole temporarily to make it for the next several hours or the nearest take-out. Although if you are on your first day on the Pecos, the patch might need to hold for another 60 miles and 6 or 7 days.
Well, first, you should do everything you can to avoid getting holes in your boat in the first place.
Back in the Boy Scouts in the Boundary Waters, we were taught to get out of the boat when the water was still knee deep, so the boat never got bounced on rocks or dragged over sand to wear down or puncture the hull.
But I know, we bounce through the rapids and over the shallows enough around here and going down the Pecos you run into the “Flutes” which means dragging a loaded boat across miles of upended limestone grooves.
So around here then, never letting your boat scrape against the rocks is a fancy dream. Do it as often as possible, though.
And there are plenty of places in even the calmest lakes and rivers that are festooned with fence posts, random pipes, lengths of rebar, and boards with nails in them. In the 2021 Buffalo Bayou Regatta, the sweep “Search and Rescue” inflatable went around a corner and tried to pull up to a beach and ran into a fence post at the waterline that tore a 4-inch gash in their forward air tube.
What do you do now?
You are wearing your PFD, right? If necessary, you don’t have to finish the trip with your boat.
Famously, Yuri Gagarin did not finish his first space flight with his spacecraft. They didn’t know how to make parachutes big enough to land the spacecraft safely, so about 4 miles up, as he was returning, he blew the hatch, and, making sure he had his parachute, jumped out and returned to Earth on his own.
Yuri Gagarin
If it is a small tear, or hole, there are some patching materials you should carry to try to patch it. E-6000. Slap Patch. Flex Seal. Goop Marine Adhesive. Pine pitch and duct tape work in a pinch, I’ve heard. And Gorilla tape. I grew up with an old Old Town wood and canvas canoe, and the external coating was simply house paint. Whatever floats your boat, I guess.
Many adhesives do not stick to the plastic boat materials these days. It works better if you can put a patch on both the inside and the outside of the hull to make a better seal. I’ve got some patches on my Dirigo 120 that I made from Shoe Goo™ and some scraps of fabric that have lasted 10 years.
First, get to shore and pull the boat out, find the hole and clean and dry it out as best you can. That spare towel in your dry bag would be a good help. If you remembered to bring it.
We once had a fellow join a trip with a sit-on-top, but he was always lagging behind. We were commenting to ourselves that somebody should go back and tell him to keep up.
I went back and discovered the back half of his boat was 3 inches underwater. Ooops. When we pulled the boat out, it had a 3 inch long, half inch wide hole where the boat had been dragged often enough to wear through.
It took some time to find a gravel bar we could pull out on. The river that day was high and running fast. We spent half an hour drying the area off, (it took a couple of towels and blowing on it) and then somebody had a tube of E6000, which we smeared liberally over and around the area, and let it dry for 10 minutes or so, and then covered it with Gorilla tape. He kept up much better the rest of the trip!
It depends on how big the hole is, how far you have to paddle, and how often you want to bail (you did bring your bailer, right?) while you are paddling and how long you need the patch to hold before you can get someplace to make a permanent patch. Also, how long can you wait for the adhesive to dry before getting back on the water. Early in the morning on a leisurely paddle you can wait for the boat and adhesive to dry, but if it’s getting dark and you have to make it to the take-out to meet your ride, or if you need to finish the race sooner rather than later, then you might have to make different decisions.
One contestant in the Texas Water Safari got a big gash in his boat. He decided to cut his boat in half around the beam and make holes and zip-tie the two halves together. He had decided to bring a container of zip ties for some reason. But it worked out for him when he finished.
If it is an inflatable, and you have a long distance to cover, consider making a bigger hole, with room to make holes on opposite sides of the large hole and push a rivet or tine through the two holes and bring the sides together. Then you can wrap line lashings around the fabric of the inflatable beneath the rivet and make an airtight seal. The rivet would prevent the lashings from sliding off the puncture. Steven Callahan, who was shipwrecked and spent 76 days in an inflatable raft as he floated from the Azores to the Caribbean, repaired a hole in his raft that way on the 53rd day, and it lasted until he was rescued.
So, holes happen. Carry some patching materials in your first aid and repair kit. Some E6000 and Gorilla tape, or Slap Patch. Don’t panic.
DON’T PANIC!
And think about ways to fix holes and gashes if you need to. There is more than one way to fix things, and whatever works, works.
See you On The Water.
Harmon