I found a sunken RIB (a 3.1 Avon)

Traced the owners and purchased it off them for an amount and am now in the throws of refurbishing it! I should have taken before and after photos but it happend so quickly that this is all I have got. The Port sponson has a hole in it mid way in its length immediately below the rubbing strake, the corner attachment of the aft part of the same sponson has been broken off (it was apparently dropped on its port aft quarter when the damage occured) it lay in the inner harbour for a year with half of the boat under water as the sponson flooded. I agreed that if I was able to get it out to look at it, I would pay one price! and if I couldn`t I would pay another as the risk ( of it not being a viable proposition) would be greater. Well six of us couldn`t lift her out because of the eighty plus gallons resident in the sponson and a four feet drop to the water where she floated (or didnt float) and so I paid a good price (for me) and towed her back to my berth. Some so called Mates of mine joined me (when they had stopped laughing) and helped me to part raise it onto a much lower pontoon so that she could start to drain out. Hey presto after about an hour of being tied precariously to a single cleat she drained and two people could lift her off the ground (with much grunting). The photo now shows her propped away from my boat and tied at the top to the stauncheons, so she doesn`t chafe my boat. I have cleaned her up a little and removed about a cricket pitches "worth of weed" (including the stains from the attachment "resins" the weed uses to stay attached and enough barnicles to feed a large shoal of fish (if we had any left in the channel). Tomorrow I take her to the menders to get her fixed :o(( but firstly I have to get her off the marina up a thirty degree ramp through security gates, on a marina trolley and into a Panel truck. ????? and me with a bad back :o((. Ho hum more of the saga later !!!!!!!!!!!!!! tomorrow evening when the Mender takes his first look at her will be crunch time. I will probably go to sleep tonight with the expected words he will say when he sees it for the first time "You paid How much"????????? its a writeoff I can`t repair that! in which case I will just have to take on the project myself. More to come I dont think that you have heard the last yet :o)) Oh! that makes it three dingies that I now own, how many more do I want? :o))