A friend called and said, "I have an I love yachting story for you". A little background, he's been restoring, to perfection, a late classic catboat. What's a catboat? It's not this but click the picture to find out what it really is.
He decided to have a professional paint the bottom in preparation for the usual summer of barnacle-infested waters of the Northern Chesapeake. So happens he has an old friend who owns a boatyard in a nearby state. The hope was not to get a better price on the work but to get the job done well. You can see where this is going, right?
After a successful splash of the boat for the first sail of the season, the centerboard was stuck and he was unable to lower it. After several attempts to get the centerboard down, the decision was made to take the boat to a local service yard and get it hauled out for inspection and repair.
Once out of the water, and after the stuck board was unstuck, it was blatantly obvious the yard that performed the professional paint job was also the culprit for the board having been stuck. To make this perfectly clear, here's a model of a catboat as an example for what the centerboard looks like when it is in the retracted (up) position.
And the punchline is... the painter painted the centerboard in the up position. The paint had caused the sticking board. However, most egregiously, the painter had left about half of the centerboard without a fresh coat of paint. Seems the painter just didn't know that the centerboard needed to come down to do the job right.
Ya just can’t make this stuff up. Examples like this are the reasons why there is seemingly no end to the I love yachting stories shared amongst fellow boaters everywhere.
Seeing the wear on that centerboard it looks like there may be more to it then just the paint. It is not uncommon for old centerboards to swell. My two cents, that and $3 bucks with get you a cup of coffee.