Therefore the water level in the bilge was necessarily higher than the water level outside the boat.I also didnt think the siphon would work to drain the bilge water into the river. I was thinking the man who was just trying to help us was a joker, but after about 15 minutes I noticed the water level had dropped a few inches.
Hi Dido –
I would suggest going forward as well. That’s how ice breakers work, they ride up on top of the ice and then crush it downward with their weight. Since the hull takes beachings readily, as we have repeatedly seen on this website, there should not be a serious structural issue with this if the ice is thin. But the centre ridge is the strong point along the hull.
Have some of your weightiest friends on board to move aft to raise the bow up, then move forward to push down on the ice.
Are you planning on towing it with a long rope (anchor line?) or using the motor? If motoring, I would expect that even moving forward ice chunks would do a real number on your prop. So use an old one if you have one.
If you do this it would be nice if you could note the ice thickness that the hull is able to crush and report back to us. I would really like to know.
I decided not to post it before, but I would think that if the time comes and ice is thick enough to support the weight of the boat without breaking that you could easily winch it along on top of the ice, with very little drag. The issue, of course, it getting it out of its “HOLE” and up on top of the ice, and you would still have to empty the ballast somehow. Would there be room to place styrofoam bars around the outside of the hull against the ice to temporarily absorb some of the expansion of the ice? Or, use, the float toys that we call here, “pool noodles”, doubled up with tape?
Good luck - Brian.
ps.Sorry that you are in this predicament, but I wish I were there because I LOVE the challenge of working on problems like this.
It just won't work if Dido likes his Monkey Shoulder neat! 
