Tims Bolger Micro 2002 Lake Charles Messabout

Article By Shorty


Tim and I were out sailing in his Micro. The blue boat in the distance is Wayne Yeargin's Montgomery 17. He seemed to be having problems, later we learned that his sail was stuck partially up, the halyard was a wire one and jumped out of the mast head fitting's sheave and was wedged in there solid. The wind kept blowing them towards the shore which was studded with huge pieces of metal sticking above the surface.

His outboard was giving him fits too, they could get it started and it would run for about a minute then quit. Every time the outboard quit, they would toss out the anchor and hope it grabs till they could get it started again. Tim and I sailed past, hailed to offer help but they didn't respond, so we sailed for the main body of the lake and were going to check on them later.

The wind was blustery, it would gust up and then calm down to about 15 mph. With one reef in we were having a great time.

Then ever so gently, seemingly in slow motion, the mast cracked and the rig fell to the sea. Luckily the mast failed on the windward "good tack" side so that when the sail fell, it wasn't torn by the stub.



The little trolling motor wasn't powerfull enough to get us home in that wind, luckily the micro has a mizzed so we sailed back to dock with it.

Tim didn't build this boat, he bought it and the previous owner had made the mast from a single piece of wood, which had a huge knot in the lower part. That was the weak spot which it broke at.

You can see in the part laying on the deck where the wood grew around the knot.

Tim and I using the trolling motor to get around the docks to the ramp.
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