Where have you been, naughty girl?

Once upon a time, my uncle and aunt got a dog from a New York pound and discovered that at some point in his former life Bruno had been taught to stand on his hind legs and walk about.  It was eerie to see because we had no idea of how he had come to learn that; and of course Bruno had no way of telling us.  The knowledge added a mysterious sort of depth to his personality that, in part, helped make him a most interesting and entertaining little guy.


As I was stripping the bottom of Diana I uncovered (literally) this.

It's a patch in the hull, not badly done (though it could have been better faired), apparently from when something holed the boat.  I imagine it may have been some ugly metal angle-iron or something poking up along a bulkhead when the boat rode there during a tidal or storm surge.  For a fin-keeled boat to sustain a hull holing in a location like this-- under the quarter berth-- for any other reason suggests some kind of funny business.  Any puncture from sharp impact afloat would have occurred forward of the keel; right?

My fear is that the boat was allowed to lie over on her side, which could (but not conclusively) account for a hole here as well as the PO's having had to rebed the keel, since that is how a fin-keeled boat sustains damage when it goes aground.  But the keel has been fixed (by me), the rest of the hull is sound, and so there is really no way of knowing at this point.  It's like undressing your lover and discovering a scar from an injury or some surgery-- it begs a question; but at least in that case you could expect some sort of answer to either set you at-ease or put you off trusting her, if only for the present.


And so this shall remain as a mystery, documented in my (very poor) photos and very soon to be covered over for ever by the epoxy barrier coating, a piece of Diana's past that she is unwilling or unable to tell me about and which inevitably, however unfortunately, imparts at least some little skepticism as to her former reputation. 


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