Another Grounding…and Shrimp Pesto Pasta

Haverstraw – 3 nautical miles in dinghy and 2 kilometers walked

We picked up Ben and Kate and the four of us dinghied up the river for a mile or so to the ship’s store in Haverstraw Marina. As promised, they had our replacement accumulator tank, a spare navigational bow light, a spare manual bilge pump then of course I found a few more things in the store that we needed  – cotter pins, rings, diesel fuel additive, spare in-line fuse holder. I am mentally and physically unable to leave a marine store empty handed.

 

Back at the boat I replaced the accumulator tank and we spend a bit more time troubleshooting the source of the water collecting in our shower room, then we had a quick lunch and dinghied into town. We stopped briefly at the children’s park because I wanted to see if I could still do a pull-up or if my muscular system had already turned to boater jelly.

 

We went to the town library and spent a glorious hour or two using the free wifi to update our various devices, but mainly sitting in comfy chairs reading books and Spanish beauty and fashion magazines. Though most of what they had on the shelves was in Spanish, I did find a few English ones of interest – the Dummy’s Guide to Samsung Tablets, a small book on the history of Puerto Rico, and a manga book with the story of Dracula. It was time very well spent.

 

From here, we stopped at the bakery for a quick snack and fresh bread, then we began our search for tortilla chips, as the avocados ripening on the counter had hit their peak so it was guacamole night. It was surprisingly difficult. We went into four bodegas and found about a hundred different brands of plantain chips but no regular tortillas, until I spotted a lonely and likely well-aged bag at the top of a shelf in the last one we tried, for the reasonable price of nearly ten bucks Canadian.

 

Ana stopped at the thrift store to find a new white shirt, as yesterday she had snagged her current well-loved white shirt on a fence and ripped half the arm off. I hung out on the sidewalk, next to some sort of addictions centre and watched the lively pedestrian and vehicular traffic in this crazy little Latino town. It’s fun being the guy loitering around, doing nothing, instead of my regular role rushing from place to place trying to get things done.

I was feeling pretty good after my first volley of pull ups so we stopped again on the way back to the dock for a few more. I’d been meaning on setting up a little pull up bar on the boat arch and doing fifty per day, but so far I hadn’t got to that project. Maybe tomorrow.

 

On the way back to the anchorage we saw our Jeff in our other buddy boat heading in. He’d had a bad couple of days. First he picked up some sort of 24 hour flu and had been barking his guts out. Then the mooring he was on back at Chelsea Yacht Club dragged in the 40 knot gusts the day before and in trying to recover he got a whole mess of rope and line and other underwater treats all wound up in his propeller, disabling the boat, and he had to get rescued by a frail, 75 year old club member after sounding his air horn to attract attention. He ended up taping a steak knife to the end of a boat hook and slicing his way blindly the mess and, miraculously, managed to cut it free…or at least enough of it to get the propellor spinning again. It’s that inspiring boater “can do” attitude.

 

Anyway, Jeff’s bad luck continued, as he had been looking at the Hudson tide tables instead of the Haverstraw ones and thought we were just off high tide but, in fact, we were at the lowest of the low tide and he grounded himself on the way in, then got off that patch and floated into a bunch of rocks, scraping against those, then motored over into another grounding. I zipped over in the dinghy, as watching his boat being used in a game of nautical pinball was gut wrenching, and as I motored over my dinghy engine smashed into a bunch of rocks and bounced up sickeningly as the dinghy stopped, stuck on some rocks just barely under the surface. I pulled myself off there then used my portable depth sounder to find a deeper path out and Jeff was able to get free. I tied my dinghy to his boat and jumped aboard to manage the anchor while he steered. I think it is simply incredible that he’s been able to mostly single-hand this 36 foot boat so far and for so long. Although he did admit later that he’s hit more shit and grounded himself more times in the past three days than in his entire boating career. I guess that’s river sailing for you.

 

After taking his dogs for a walk and squirt, Jeff joined us on SeaLight for an incredible meal of shrimp pesto pasta and garlic bread that Ana whipped up, then Ben and Kate came over shortly afterwards for guac and chips. It was nice to have all three buddy boats together again, and these guys are just so much fun and have so many interesting stories. We love this crew!

This was our third and final day in Haverstraw – tomorrow we leave for the final run to New York City.

Keeping Water Out of a Boat

Haverstraw – 0 nautical miles and 0 kilometers walked

For a boat, it’s important to have the water on the outside. Outside water provides buoyancy, a means through which to move to place to place, and a place to swim and fish. But outside water is also required for a few key boat systems - the trick is to draw outside water into the boat in a controlled and predictable fashion. If you get too much outside water inside the boat, then outside water becomes inside water and inside water becomes outside water and you have just sunk.

 

Outside water is drawn into the boat via thru hulls, which are open holes below the waterline protected by opening/closing valves called seacocks, which are installed with strong adhesive to make them waterproof. This outside water is used for engine cooling, air conditioner/heating units, toilet flushing, and sometimes to provide water to the galley sink. Fresh water for drinking, cooking, and showers is also stored in onboard tanks, and they are filled by removing a screw-on cap from one or multiple deck fittings and pumping in the water, usually from a water source at a dock, or from large portable containers. Pumps then move this water from the onboard tanks to all the taps, showers, ice makers, and anywhere else where water is required.

Where can things go wrong? Leaks in the thru hulls, leaks in the deck fittings, leaks in the taps or drains, leaks in the hoses that move the water throughout the inside systems, or leaks in the systems themselves. 

 

Outside water can also get into the boat in a less controlled manner. Rainwater or splashing ocean water can get in through leaky windows, leaky hatches, at the mast step or through the mast, or cracks or holes in the topsides of the boat. There are other places water can enter – through the shaft seal, which is where the shaft from the engine exits the boat, and protected by either a dripless shaft seal or a traditional stuffing box that drips in a predictable way to provide lubrication. Another way is through the rudder, as the place where the rudder connects to the steering system is often below the waterline. Yet another way is through the keel bolts, which is where the sailboat’s heavy keel is bolted through the fibreglass. There are a couple of less obvious ones too. Air conditioners create condensation, as do windows when there is a temperature differential between the inside and outside of the boat. There are also refrigerators and iceboxes that have drains for collected water and fluids. 

 

Fortunately, boats are designed to expel any outside water that gets inside. The controlled systems usually have their own pumps and thru hulls. For example, the engine draws in water then expels it through a wet exhaust hose and hull fitting, usually above the waterline. Boat heads and galleys use pumps or gravity to remove grey water (from showers and sinks) and toilet pumps move black water into an internal holding tank, which is later pumped out at a marina through a deck fitting. The air conditioner/heating unit also has a pump which discharges the water via a thru hull.

 

What’s left is the bilge pump, which is the final defense against outside water when inside systems fail. The bilge pump (or pumps, as it’s better to have two or more for redundancy) lies at the bottom-most part of the boat and the hull is designed such that any leaking water should eventually find its way there, usually through a series of drain holes. Most boats have a series of floor compartments which channel the water into the main bilge so it can be pumped out.

 

Which brings me to SeaLight. She’s generally been a pretty dry boat, but this year she started collecting water in the bilge compartments. It began slow at first then got slightly worse as the summer progressed, but not to the point of panic. Every week we’d come down to the boat and I’d have to remove a salad bowl full of water, and this water collected in a place where it didn’t quite reach the drain hole to make it into the centre compartment where the bilge pump is. It was an annoyance, but we had so many other projects to do to prepare the boat for this trip that we weren’t able to focus on that problem.

 

For the past two weeks, the problem has been getting worse. More water seemed to be collecting when we were underway with the engine, but not all the time. We also discovered there is a large cavity below the visible bilge compartments that I could draw at least a gallon of water out by using a vacuum on the drain holes. We checked all the thru hulls and looked for leaks anywhere we could access the hull from inside the boat, but found no sign of leaks. Also, up until this point the boat was in fresh water so it was impossible to tell if the water was coming from our fresh water system, rainwater, or lake/river water. We had our buddy boat friends come over and look at it and provide advice. Ben suggested that instead of drinking rum every evening for cocktail hour we should be removing a salad bowl of water and doing bilge shots, to detect changes in salinity, not to mention delicate bouquets of diesel and mold. Jeff figured we should take a grinder and shave off the fibreglass from the drain holes to see what the hell was going on down there. If there was indeed a leak coming from the outside, then we were going to have to haul the boat and have it repaired as incessant leaking was going to do some major damage to the integrity of the fibreglass. Two excellent suggestions, but I wasn’t quite ready to go that far.

 

I had been taste testing the river water and today I could finally detect salinity, which was going to prove once and for all if the water was coming in from the outside – now it was time for bilge shots. The other factor was that we had some pretty major repairs done to the hull this past spring which involved cutting out fibreglass, re-glassing, and re-bedding the entire keel, which was required due to an unplanned encounter last summer between our keel and a underwater Thousand Islands boulder. The guy that fixed it – Peter Jones from Niagara-on-the-Lake – is a real pro and I could just not fathom that he could have done anything other than a perfect repair.

 

The other day I thought we had cracked the problem as we discovered a plugged anti-siphon valve which was causing engine cooling water to be ejected from a hose into the bilge. Well, after extensive testing over days, turns out that was not the entire problem, as we were still getting water. So today we ripped open every floorboard, sucked every single drain hole and compartment dry and went through our systems one by one, testing, and monitoring for leaks. And we found two. The accumulator tank under the main galley sink had a slow but steady leak, so I removed it, and with the help of Ben we took it apart and discovered the bladder was ripped. So I bypassed the accumulator, plumbed the line directly into the pump, which stopped the leak. We hadn’t noticed this before because we had so many cleaning supplies and brushes and other junk rammed in below the sink. Secondly, we discovered the main shower room has a gap at the fitting where sink and shower water drips down, slips into a drain hole, and was eventually finding its way into the bilge. But you could only see it happening when the shower was on and you had your head jammed into the small cabinet under the sink.

 

By the end of the day, we were able to confirm there is no more water collecting in the bilge. Even better, Ana discovered a marine store just a mile away from our location and ordered a new accumulator tank, plus a few other bits and pieces we need.

Thanksgiving in Central America

Chelsea Yacht Club to Haverstraw – 23 nautical miles and 3 kilometers walked

For the first time since the day we crossed Lake Oneida, we awoke to rain. The weather we’ve experienced so far has been incredible – favourable winds, sunny and warm days, cool nights, and getting a little cooler as the days pass. At some point our pursuit of sunny southern climates will overpower the relentless orbit of the Earth tilting us Northerners further and further away from the sun. But we aren’t there yet – this is still a race against winter.

 

We had consumed one of our water tanks and about a quarter of the second, but had forgotten to ask the members of the club we met yesterday if and where we could fill up the tanks, so we left the mooring and started our way down the Hudson looking for options, and we found one such option at a marina near Newburgh. We pulled in, got docked with the help of a friendly Quebecer there with his catamaran, and proceeded to fill up both water tanks. We asked him the protocol for water fills – payment and such – and he said, “Just fill up and leave – nobody’s around!” So we did just that and could now be fairly accused of shoplifting 400 litres of fresh water. In my defense, I did try to get to the marina office to ask somebody, but it was behind a locked gate and I didn’t want to strand myself in case nobody was there.

 

The sail today was pleasant and uneventful, and an hour into the trip we passed right out of the big storm system passing west to east and found sunshine. We passed by West Point military school which looked like a damn Game of Thrones stronghold. By about 1:30 pm, 45 minutes before low tide, we approached the entrance of Haverstraw Harbour, a sizeable anchorage with 360 degree protection and room for at least twenty boats. The only problem was this: the charts showed 4.5 feet of depth at the channel entrance at low tide, and SeaLight draws a full 6 feet. I didn’t think there was going to be enough water for us to get in so I foresaw us dropping anchor in the river and waiting 3 – 4 hours for the tide turnaround. We dropped the dinghy and I ripped towards the channel entrance checking the depth at various points with our handheld depth sounder. The lowest I found was 6.5 feet so I raced back, tied the dingy to the arch and hit the gas. As we approached, we both stood at the helm watching the boat’s depth sounder nervously and there was no way to guarantee the entire channel held enough water. Our sounder displayed the depth of water under our keel – 14..11..8..3..1..0.5..0.3..0.1, 0.0.. We waited for the boat to skid to a halt but she floated through magically on a cushion of luck and we got ourselves anchored and secure in a most amazingly protected anchorage.

 

We took the dinghy into the public dock to explore the town of Haverstraw, expecting to find English pubs and biscuit shops judging by the Britishness of the name, but we found anything but.

We had been dropped into the middle of Central America and the Latin Caribbean. Main Street was a bustling affair with packs of Latino men with perfectly chiseled facial hair gathered outside of shops speaking in rapid fire Spanish, with accents from a dozen countries. All the business signs were in Spanish or Spanish and English or Spanglish. Latina hoochies in camel-toed stretchy pants strutted past the groups of hot blooded gangstas, attracting attention. Little kids darted in and out of stores, through the legs of loiterers, and one did a catwalk on his bike along the sidewalk for an entire block. A soul-vibrating wall of bass came up behind us, nearly knocking us off our feet, and I was sure the home made spoiler on the driver’s Honda Civic was going to rattle right off. Music blasted from every shop – Bachata, Reggaeton, Salsa, Ranchera, Merengue. We walked the entire length of the two commercial streets and found a repeating pattern of shops – densely packed bodegas with identical specialty Latino grocery offerings such as tinned Goya products, hot sauces, rice, and spices. There were Sports Bars, Barber Sports Bars, beauty salons, restaurants, hot pants clothing stores, cafes, laundromats, money transfer places, plus a Catholic church or two. And people everywhere, in the shops, in the streets, cruising in vehicles, in stark contrast to the many upstate ghost towns we visited.

 

Ana and I have been in a hundred neighbourhoods like this – in Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Mexico, but never in one with people from all of these places. It was a kaleidoscope of vibrant Latin colour and food, fashion and sounds, skin tones and accents, men and women and kids, and it was on the Hudson River in the USA. I loved it.

We wandered back to the dinghy, along the way discussing how on earth all these Latinos pronounce the word “Haverstraw” because that unruly sequence of consonants and vowels do not easily glide off the Spanish tongue.

 

Our faithful buddy boat Waddington had arrived shortly after us earlier in the day so we gathered in SeaLight’s cockpit for an afternoon cocktail and I sneaked a photo as the setting sun shone a beautiful colour into our space. Somewhere along the line somebody realized it was Canadian Thanksgiving, so cocktail hour turned into dinner and we enjoyed a fine meal together then finished up the night with a new game we invented with our friends Greg and Sharon back in Newport. Each person gets ten minutes to deliver their life story, from birth to now. Go!