New York City – Cleaning Anchor Holds, Fixing Batteries, Fixing Leaks

New York City – 7 kilometers walked

Both Ana and I just love big cities. Since arriving in New York City, we have been averaging a pretty consistent 13 kilometres of walking per day exploring at random. Magnus too is a big city kid and today he took off on his own to explore NYC while Ana and I hung back to work on the battery issues and get some laundry done. I must also mention our sweet daughter Stella, who completed high school in June and is in the midst of a gap year and doing some traveling of her own. She is currently in Los Angeles with a friend of hers, visiting her grandma, who looks to be pampering them endlessly. They’ve been to Disneyland, spent two nights in a splashy hotel in Newport Beach, have been out for many shwanky dinners, and are currently at their fancy beach house somewhere in Arizona, and spent the day racing around the desert in a side by side. I don’t know who’s taking care of our house.

 

Once the sun was high enough in the sky and the solar panels were pumping out juice, I ran the equalization process on the batteries, which I was hoping might help the dead cells recover, but it did not so we then got online and started researching replacement options. I think we’ve decided on a set of four Renogy lithium 100 amp hour batteries, but still need to confirm they are going to fit into the available space and work with the existing wiring. We’re realizing that it’s a lot tougher getting stuff you need when you don’t have a fixed address. I expected that the density of the population in this area would mean we could get anything we needed. Not true - everything seems to be shipped these days and it’s just as tough finding suppliers of specialty items here as it is at home. While diagnosing the problem, I’ve been having to run our portable generator at night and in the morning to get the battery voltage where it needs to be. Next step is to remove the two bad batteries from the bank, which will reduce the capacity, but at least give us the proper voltage.

 

I took a load of laundry into the marina and found the local sailing club hosting a big regatta…with no wind. I felt terrible for them as we’ve had nothing but constant wind for days and it all whiffed out for the weekend. They didn’t even get to use these cool racing buoys they have where they are outfitted with GPS and a small engine and they actually drive themselves out to the appropriate position in the river! Never seen that before.

 

After horsing around on the boat for a while longer trying to fix a small leak we found in the forward head, we both returned to the marina to finish up the laundry, then were planning to travel to Times Square to meet up with Magnus. While Ana was waiting for the last load to dry I took a walk through the nearby Inwood Park. The weather here has been gorgeous – getting into the low 20’s every day, full sunshine, feels just like the summer, except for the cool nights, which are nice too. The park was a fully wooded areas with three main trails running throughout. I was surprised to find few people and a feeling of remoteness, as the trail ran up some steep, rocky inclines and at points offered views to the Hudson to the west and to the Harlem River to the north and east. The path I was on wrapped right around the northernmost end of Manhattan Island and beneath a bridge connecting it to the mainland. I even managed to get a bit lost and popped out of the forest in a residential neighbourbood just down the street from the main commercial area.

Ana had been speaking to Magnus and after walking the entire day, criss-crossing NYC, he decided to start making his way back and didn’t think we should bother going to meet him, which suited me fine as I was not looking forward to another two hours spent on the subway. Instead, we went for a walk to a different grocery store we hadn’t been to yet and picked up a few things. Ana made sure to triple inspect everything in the bags as last time we went shopping we had a stowaway – a little cockroach which we found in the boat and had to terminate him immediately.

 

While making the bed in the v-berth, Ana took a peek beneath it and made an interesting discovery….water. Ugh. It looked to be coming from the anchor hold. It was already late in the day and I didn’t really want to get into that job, but Ana convinced me and before long the bed was completely ripped apart and spread over the rest of the interior of the boat and the top deck of SeaLight was a disaster,  strewn with the contents of our filthy anchor hold – 150 feet of chain caked with gooey clay and muck from our last anchorage, our rusty secondary anchor, diesel and gas cans, spare anchor line, plus gear to clean it all - hoses, buckets, brushes, gloves, wet vacuum. I am quite sure we’ve never cleaned the anchor hold and it was a pretty nasty job as it was full of mud, leaves, clam shells, a stainless steel washer, bolt, and pin (I wonder where those came from?), sand, and other unrecognizable junk. We finally got it cleared out and decided to let it sit overnight to fully dry out before I would crawl in there to seal up whatever leaks I could find. The fun just never stops on a boat.

 

Magnus returned to a boat that looked like it had been sunk in a hurricane and was being lipsticked for a quick sale. He enjoyed a rum and coke on the only clean part of the top deck he could find while we put things below back together then made an excellent dinner of mushroom chicken, salad, and a yuca/carrot/onion tossup.

Tomorrow we fix the leaks, remove the misbehaving batteries from the bank, and hang out with Magnus for our last day in the big city.

New York City – The Metropolitan Museum of Art

New York City – 13 kilometers walked

Yesterday I discovered that one is not supposed to top up the water in lead acid batteries unless the batteries are fully charged. Normally our boat is plugged into shore power at the marina all the time so I add water whenever they need it. Today I woke up to an alarm on the boat’s inverter/charger telling me that the 12 volt battery system was down to 10.5 volts. Once again, I fired up our portable generator to charge up the batteries but for some reason could not get our inverter/charger to switch into equalize mode to try and solve the problem. We had a big breakfast of pancakes and bacon in the middle of this, and it wasn’t until close to 11 that I gave up and we headed into shore to say our goodbyes to Ben and Kate who had decided to push on down the Hudson. We expected to see them again very soon.

 

The plan for today was to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a place I’ve long wanted to see. We exited the subway at the 86^th street station and walked across the perfectly rectangular and bustling Central Park, passing by a lovely lake called the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir, then found a 12 piece mariachi band playing La Bamba to a thousand people on the steps of the Met. 

 

The gallery was amazing, both for its stunning architecture and the elaborate galleries, of which it houses hundreds of them. We explored the ancient Egypt galleries first, which Ana absolutely loved, then moved randomly from room to room, seeing American art, tapestries, elaborate furnishings, European sculpture, modern art, impressionist paintings, and all manner of ancient knickknacks. I took a photo of a room full of antique Chinese teapots for our friends Linda and Brian who run a teahouse and would be just giddy over that collection. The entire experience was overwhelming and this gallery is clearly one of the best in the world. After nearly three hours we had made it through about two-thirds of world class art on just the first floor, but were starting to get hangry so we cut and ran for the nearest Shake Shack and enjoyed world class burgers and milkshakes as we looked out on the Upper East Side rich and famous walking and driving their swanky neighbourhood.

 

Ana and Magnus wanted to do some window shopping on Fifth Avenue, Madison Avenue, and Park Avenue so I went back to the Met to see how much more I could get through. I managed at least a dozen galleries of European Renaissance paintings, most of the Asian section with its artifacts, calligraphy, sculptures and models, then I finished up with browsing the ancient Greek and Roman section which was expansive and overwhelming, and when I found myself standing there in front of a magnificent statue of the Roman emperor Trebonianus Gallus, mesmerized by the detail of his marbled and veined testicles and uncircumcised penis, I realized I had hit “peak culture” and it was time to get back to the boat for a thoroughly modern and proletariat rum and coke.

 

I met my crew and we walked back across Central Park, navigating the other side of the lake, then eventually made it back to home base after what seemed like an eternity on the subway trains or subway platforms waiting for trains. We had a great and slow meal of burritos on the boat and talked a lot about what we had seen during the day, and started making plans for tomorrow, which was likely to start with laundry, grocery shopping, and boat fixing for us and an NYC solo mission for Magnus.

New York City – Magnus Does New York

New York City – 14 kilometers walked

I woke up to an alarm on the boat’s inverter/charger telling me that the 12 volt battery system was down to 10.5 volts. This was strange, as the battery charge percentage drops overnight to around 90%, but the voltage is always at least 12.5 volts. I ripped the boat apart to get at the batteries and tested the specific gravity of each cell and found some of them too low or, in two of the cells, I wasn’t getting a reading at all. I did some online research and the only issue I could find is that the morning before I had topped up all the cells with distilled water, but learned that you are only supposed to do this when the batteries are completely charged, and they were not. But I can’t imagine that could completely ruin a cell. To get things charging I pulled out our portable generator, fired it up, and let it run for a few hours until we were fully charged, then I tried running a battery equalization process to see if that might straighten things out, but that didn’t seem to work properly and it was getting late so I decided to throw in the towel for the day. Besides, we had to get downtown to meet our son Magnus who was flying in to hang out with us for the weekend!

 

Ana and I took the subway to midtown and visited the Stephen Schwatzman branch of the New York Public Library. It is a magnificent building and had many specialty collections and art displays. Not much for Vogue or Popular Science magazines, but plenty to offer if you are an egghead, scholar, or researcher.

 

Ana received a note from Magnus saying he had landed and was en route so we left and started towards our meeting point – the Empire State Building. Along the way we ended up behind a couple very much in love, and I know they were very much in love because they had their arms wrapped around each other as they walked and the girl had her hand stuck right down the back of the dude’s jeans, getting right in there. Or maybe she was doing the “shower test” to see if it was time for him to have one. In either case, we shifted into the sidewalk passing lane and got around them.

 

We found our smiling son and gave him a huge hug then took him out for a big NYC pizza then started walking the city. We walked for miles down Broadway, past the Flatiron building, through a huge market at Union Square, visited the Evolution shop (good place to buy dried frogs, human skeletons, mink penis bones, gemstones, fossils, and other delights which will drive your evangelical and flat-earther friends crazy), then Canal Street where Magnus and I went for coffee while Ana haggled with the Nigerian and Chinese merchants of fine counterfeit handbags and wallets. From here we continued south to the 911 memorial and nearby public art displays then went inside the Oculus to have a look around. We were all starting to get a little tired – especially Magnus who had been up since 5am, so we rode the subway back to home base..and were surprised to find ourselves in the middle of a big Latino night market where streets had been blocked off, vendors were selling all varieties of Latino food and drinks, and the tunes were pumping hard.

As tempting as it was to stay, we dinghy’d back to the boat and made ourselves a meal as we enjoyed cocktail hour with our boy, who we were so very happy to see.

New York City – Furries, Highline, Grape Jelly, and Dry Pretzels

New York City – 14 kilometers walked

I started to get a feel for the geography of NYC today. Turns out our marina is near an area of Manhattan called Fort George, very close to the north end, not the Bronx, which I realized is not in Manhattan at all, but east from us across the Harlem River. I’ve heard the names of all these places so many times through American movies and shows, but now I’ll finally get to understand where they all are.

 

We picked up Ben and Kate in the dinghy around 9am and hopped on a subway train heading south. Ben wanted to have breakfast at that Monk’s Café restaurant from Seinfeld (in reality called Tom’s Restaurant, and only the outside of it was used in the show, with the interior being an LA set), but the 110^th stop came and went as our train whizzed by it and we realized we were on some sort of express ride and instead got off near Times Square and started big city wandering.

 

Times Square is flashy and awesome, but there were a bunch of Furries walking around pestering people. I thought maybe it was some sort of Furry convention (and we all know what shenanigans those kinky fellers get up to at their gatherings) but Ana told me they are always there and you’re supposed to pay to have a photo taken with them. One dressed like Grover propositioned Ben, but Grover looked like he was just coming off a heavy night of drinking and had been dragged down the street at some point during the night because his fur was all matted and ripped and he staggered instead of walked.

 

We headed west and found a nice looking spot for breakfast – Galaxy Café, and enjoyed a slow, delicious feed as we people-watched the New Yorkers going about their daily business. The waiter delivered an excessive number of Welch’s grape jelly single serving containers so I eyed up the staff and waited for the perfect moment when none of them were looking our way and pocketed four of them for later consumption. Grape jelly is just such a treat.

 

During breakfast Kate brought up Elmo, as one of the Furries we saw seemed to be going for that look.

 

“Wasn’t Elmo Grover’s cousin or nephew or something?” I asked the group.

 

“I don’t think so,” Ana said.

 

“Not sure, but they seemed to be exceptionally close,” said Kate.

 

“Well you know those Muppets,” said Ben. “They’re all cut from the same cloth.”

 

After settling our bills we continued walking west then turned south when we noticed the gigantic aircraft carrier – Intrepid. I was hoping to pay a visit to this place as you can get right up on the ship, see dozens of aircraft, and I think there’s a nuclear sub there. But that would have to wait until another day.

 

We walked until we reached the beginning of the Highline, a community-led project that turned an abandoned, raised railway line into a beautiful urban path, full of public art pieces, many species of trees and plants, many small grotto-like areas just off the main path offering quiet seating, and lots and lots of tourists and locals using it. One of the art pieces was a giant aluminum pigeon that was incredibly lifelike. I couldn’t help but bob my head and in out as I walked by.

 

At the end of the Highline we walked for a while through Chelsea then decided to split up, Scooby-Doo style. Ben and I walked to a pub in Greenwich Village, and drank a few rounds of dark ‘n stormys, IPAs, and lagers as we watched live bluegrass on one tv and American football highlights on the other while the ladies went to T.J. Maxx and perused the deals.

 

The ladies met us for one drink then we started our way over to a subway station, but stopped near the Washington Square Park at a hot dog cart for a little pick me up. Three of us got hot dogs and Ana went for a New York pretzel and it was the most tasteless and dry bread twist we’d ever encountered. I slid my hand into my pocket and revealed one of the stolen jellies and my gang erupted in a chorus of cheers, congratulatory back slapping, and they even lifted me up on their shoulders and carried me around the park for a while as random people in the park lined up to lay the high-five’s on me. It's nice to get it right sometimes. The jelly made the pretzel marginally edible so we ate as much as we could then I threw the remainder to a group of NYC pigeons who all picked away at it then rolled over, dead.

 

The subway ride home was long and boring. No weirdos in the carriage to look at. No musical groups entertaining the riders. Just silence. I noticed that nearly everybody had earbuds in their ears or were wearing big headphones, and most of them were intently focused on their phones for the entire ride, so living in their own worlds. We finally reached the Dyckman stop, got out, did the short walk back to the marina, then dinghy’d back to the boats and called it a night.

New York City and Goodbye to Jeff

Haverstraw to Dyckman Marine in the Bronx – 22 nautical miles and 5 kilometers walked

Last night in the anchorage was calm and restful, which was a nice change from the previous afternoon and evening where the wind was howling and gusting up to 40 knots, straining our anchor and dragging us halfway across the bay, which was only fixed by letting out another 50 feet of anchor chain. It was a struggle to dislodge the anchor from the bottom muck, and both the chain and anchor was packed with sticky, black mud, which all splattered all over the boat and anchor hold as I pulled it in.

 

We left Haverstraw at 9:30 am, three of us in a row, 30 minutes short of high tide, following the exact path we took on the way in to avoid bashing into anything. A brisk wind was blowing from the north-west down the river creating large standing waves against the tidal current. We put up our headsail along with the motor and started the day’s travels, which we hoped would end in New York City.

 

We were sailing quite close to Jeff and Ana said, “Hey, look at Jeff.”

 

I looked over and saw him bundled up in his yellow raincoat, with big headphones on and a fuzzy hat, enjoying the ride. “I see him, what’s up?”

 

“I think he’s smoking a cigar.”

 

I looked again and immediately saw a puff of blue smoke erupt from the cockpit. Ana texted him immediately.

 

Why didn’t you tell us you’re a cigar smoker? Kris has some Cubans stashed away and one has your name on it.

 

He’s got Cubans?? If he’s got Cubans then why am I smoking this $11 filth?

 

After an uneventful ride enjoying the beautiful shorelines with the rapidly colouring trees and classy mansions dotted throughout, the outline of the George Washington bridge and skyline of NYC came into view and Ana and I stopped to reflect. Whenever I imagined moments from this trip, the one that immediately came to mind was sailing into NYC, and what that would feel like making it through this first leg of our long journey. I can tell you it felt great, and we took a photo of ourselves on deck to commemorate the moment.

 

Dyckman Marina is a small place right on the Hudson River with two long rows of moorings, stretching out for at least a kilometer. We were put on ball 41, at the end, and learned very quickly how fast the current runs at this end of the river. Navigating the boat up to the mooring back was like being in river rapids. We failed on our first attempt, but the second time around we grabbed the two pennants (these are ropes attached to the top of the mooring ball that float around in the water until you snag them with your boat hook) and cleated them securely to our boat then watched them strain under the weight of a 19,000 pound boat, a 3 - 4 knot current, and 15 knot gusts of wind. We hoped it would hold.

 

After giving Jeff a hand grabbing a mooring, and finding his pennants were crawling with authentic New York sea lice, which Ana squashed indiscriminately, we dinghied into the marina, motored right into the shallow mud flats and stalled it out then had to pry the outboard up and out of the muck, then went to the small office, and paid for a full week of dockage for just US$240. That doesn’t even buy you one night at the cheapest hotel in NYC. Of course, you do have to buy yourself a big boat and take two weeks to sail it here, but never mind – it’s still the best deal in the city. We asked the nice lady there about the safety of the neighbourhood and she said it was very safe during the day, but could get a little “lively” at night. Hmmm, lively. When people tell you their child can get “lively”, that means he’s a real shithead.

 

The neighbourhood was awesome and was just what I’d imagined. People were black, white, Latino, Asian, with a mix of styles and looks, lots of fluffy haired school kids, lots of everybody else too. The streets were lined with all manner of shops and the subway station was a five minute walk from the marina. We noticed several spots where cars had pulled over and were getting washed, so I called over a guy that looked to be running one of them and he happily told us how it worked (you claim a piece of sidewalk, get a permit from the city), the cost ($30 for a car, inside and out), and how there were often a line of cars on the weekend waiting for a wash. We circled the neighbourhood, getting our bearings and a feel for the place we’d be calling home for the next week. We picked up a few things from a grocery store (and found a whole section of Snyder’s snacks), got out some cash, stopped for a coffee and ice tea, then eventually wandered back to the marina and dinghied back to the boat to pick up supplies for the sundowner we’re arranged with the gang.

 

Our first sundowner in the big city was perfect. Sadly, this was to be our last one with Jeff as he planned to leave tomorrow and sail for 16 hours to get to the place in Connecticut where he’d be keeping his boat for a few months to do a bunch of work on it. We sat around, told stories, had a constant barrage of hilarious one-liners from Ben, who has such a sharp wit and a killer sense of humour. Kate has that dry English humour and, though she doensn’t seem to like being the center of attention, comes out with some real crackers, just at the right time. Jeff is a master story teller and has so many interesting and crazy experiences. Plus he’s hilarious. It wasn’t hard to keep ourselves entertained with this crew.

 

After we spotted two skunks, or maybe badgers lurking around the areas we skedaddled back to the dinghies, said our goodbyes, then had a mesmerizing ride beneath the stars, a full moon, and the spectacular lights of the George Washington bridge.

 

It was a good first day.

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.