On the Boat Again

The Minnesota fishing trip was a success in that we had incredible weather and we caught fish.

One day it just got too hot.

Now Denise and I are back to cruising, but didn't get too far before another problem arose.  I'll get to that in a minute.

We flew into Washington Reagan (or National if you're a native), on Tuesday evening, picked up a rental car and arrived at the boat about 10:30 pm.  We didn't know if we would be able to stay on the boat until just before leaving Chicago as it was not in the water yet as of Tuesday morning.  But the marina called just before the flight and announced it had been re-launched and would be available to sleep on, which we did.  We spent Wednesday re-provisioning in nearby La Plata, Maryland, returned the rental car to Waldorf, MD and made a few more preparations to get underway this morning.

The damage to the boat from the encounter on the river three weeks ago included a bent starboard shaft and a pretty dinged up starboard prop.  The shaft was replaced along with new bearings and the prop was re-built.  It wasn't cheap.

We left around 9:30 this morning and were only underway about an hour and a half when the "high water" alarm began sounding.  Denise took over and I went below to investigate.  What I found was water in the bilge and neither bilge pump working.  I then made the biggest mistake of the trip so far when I exclaimed to Denise, "we're taking on water and the bilge pumps aren't working."  She screamed "get to land NOW" and then put on her auto inflatable life jacket. 

In retrospect, I should have down played the severity of the situation and go about doing what we ended up doing anyway.  That was to locate the nearest marina, about 4 miles away, and calmly proceed to it, which we did.  That's where we are now, in Dahlgren, Virginia.  A technician was available and diagnosed the problem(s), a bilge pump with a failing shutoff switch that was causing it to overheat and then blow the fuse.  The second problem was that this bilge was wired with the forward bilge, so with the blown fuse the forward bilge wouldn't run either.  Unfortunately, the marina did not have a new bilge big enough for us, so we decided to stay here and wait for two new bilges, which are supposed to be delivered tomorrow.  The technician will install them and re-wire so that they are independent of each other.

All of that then raises the question, where is the water coming from?  After consultation with Geo, the marina that did the shaft work and the local technician the suspicion is that the "stuffing box", which the shaft runs through probably needs to be adjusted.  The technical folks tell me that is almost expected after a new installation.  It would have been nice to know to look for this before it happened.  We will likely be at this marina all day tomorrow and possibly tomorrow night again.  Right now we are sitting in a thunder storm and the last lightning strike may have hit the sail boat next to us, it was that close.

There is good news though.  The water alarm worked.  Tom and I had relocated it to make room for the new stereo back in April.

Stay tuned for continuing developments.