Our boat has a history. That history is largely unknown to us. We were told she had circumnavigated but there were no specifics. Sometimes, though, history cannot be completely hidden. You know how archeologists unearth tombs and find skulls with bullet wounds or bones with sword wounds? It’s sort of like that.
Meravigila has some wounds of her own that soda blasting had exposed. There were circular areas on the bottom where the fiberglass had obviously been repaired. Normally, one would think “Oh! Those must have been from old through-hull fittings!” Except these are in the wrong spots. So why would the hull need repair in those areas? There was also a section of the keel that had obviously been repaired. And after grinding back the rudder to get rid of the delamination (see Chapter 11), we found that, at some point, the lower half of the rudder had snapped off.
What happened to her, exactly? Well, there’s really no way to know for sure, but the pattern suggests storm damage: at some point, perhaps she was caught in a storm and impacted something-perhaps a pier or jetty. Those round “wounds” are consistent with hull penetration from a piling or something similar.
Perhaps somewhere, someone who knows the answer will read this and let us know! Otherwise, it’s just educated guessing. But the good news is that the repairs were done well, so we can cover them over with epoxy and her scars will be well-hidden. (Hi! Future Bob and Kim here. We should add: or so we thought!)