It was only a 34 mile trip. I should have known it would be problematic when Pamela woke me up.
"Don't expect to take a shower. We're out of water."
Out of water? How could that be? We carry 200 gallons and I filled the tank just a few days before we left Isle of Hope. Well, we were anchored in the Duplin River off Sapelo Island. Nothing to do about it. Pam made coffee using some of our bottled water.
We planned on leaving at 8 AM. I groggily (I NEED my morning shower) went into the engine room for our preflight check. Coolant good. Engine oil good. Transmission fluid good. Fuel polishing Racor.... full of water. HUH!? Could our built in water tank have cracked, and leaked into our built in fuel tanks? I informed Pam of the problem and began draining the water.
Flashback to Sandy Hook, New Jersey last October when we lost both engines in rough seas. I spent a couple of hours bleeding fuel lines until I got the engines running long enough to get us to Atlantic Highlands Marina. We spent a month there and I installed two Filter Boss systems. The Filter Boss is a nifty setup with two filters per unit. There is a vacuum gauge as part of the package. If a filter starts to clog, and alarm goes off in the cockpit and I simply flip a toggle to switch to the other filter.
I used the old Racors as a fuel polishing system. The Filter Boss pickup tubes are about three or four inches off the bottom of the tank. I put the fuel polishing pickup tube about a half inch off the bottom. Diesel fuel is lighter than water, so any water in the tank is on the bottom. And that water was now filling the Racors.
After about an hour, I had the water pretty much out and we hoisted anchor at 9 AM. Because of the amount of water in the tank, I did a filter check every 15 minutes. Every 15 minutes, I had a filter full that I had to drain. I looked at the thermometer. It was pegged at 125 degrees, as high as it went. Eventually, I reduced my filter checks to every half hour. The heat was getting to me.
We pulled in to Brunswick Landing Marina at 2:30. We were met at our dock by Sherri, the dockmaster. It was a perfect landing. 90 degree right turn into the fairway, 90 degree left turn into our slip. Southern Comfort is on our port side and I didn't want to hit him, nor did I want to hit the dock. I nailed it.
Sherri informed us that their 4th of July party was just getting underway. I needed to adjust our dock lines, and Ruby and Chevy needed to go potty. They hadn't gone in two days. Pam and Megan took them up and I did the lines, had a victory beer, and started filling the water tanks.
I went into the engine room to check things. Yep, still pegged at 125. Yep, a Racor full of water. Heck with it, I'll drain it later. I poked my light around the room. I looked at the water pump. It was pumping and didn't need to be primed. Then I saw a stream of water shooting down the wall behind the pump. There was a hose laying there. I picked it up. It had a clamp on the end. It used to go to the pressure tank. I stuck it back on and tightened it up real good.
Why did it come off? It's been there for two years? I finally came up with a theory. The engine room was hotter than it's ever been before. When we arrived at Isle of Hope in February it was cool and the engine room never got over 100 degrees. Now it was well above that. As you know, when things get hot they expand. I'm thinking that the metal clamp expanded, and the pressure tank blew the hose right off sending 200 gallons of water into the bilge.
The three gallons of water the fuel polishing system picked up? Condensation. Lots of condensation.
The marina's party was fun. There's a lot of nice people here, and John and Beth from About Time greeted us. They were transients at Isle of Hope for a few days and joined us for our pot luck dinner.
After the party, we checked out the wifi. It works great! I programmed the TVs using the antenna and we get a couple of dozen channels. That's good enough too, so I don't think we'll sign up for cable. That saves us $25 a month. I'll also cut our Verizon hotspot from 10 GB to 5 GB saving us another $40. Cool beans.
Later that evening, we enjoyed the Brunswick fireworks with new friends Jon and Renne', liveaboards on their Tayana 42 JonNe'. Jon and Renne' are retired, but Renne' writes. She's done mysteries and such, but is now writing a children's series of books about sailing called the "Nighty Night" series. If you have kids or grandkids, I think these would make great gifts. You can check them out on her blog.
I'll be working on the 300 photos we took from Isle of Hope to Brunswick and hope to have them ready for tomorrow's blog.
"Don't expect to take a shower. We're out of water."
Out of water? How could that be? We carry 200 gallons and I filled the tank just a few days before we left Isle of Hope. Well, we were anchored in the Duplin River off Sapelo Island. Nothing to do about it. Pam made coffee using some of our bottled water.
We planned on leaving at 8 AM. I groggily (I NEED my morning shower) went into the engine room for our preflight check. Coolant good. Engine oil good. Transmission fluid good. Fuel polishing Racor.... full of water. HUH!? Could our built in water tank have cracked, and leaked into our built in fuel tanks? I informed Pam of the problem and began draining the water.
Flashback to Sandy Hook, New Jersey last October when we lost both engines in rough seas. I spent a couple of hours bleeding fuel lines until I got the engines running long enough to get us to Atlantic Highlands Marina. We spent a month there and I installed two Filter Boss systems. The Filter Boss is a nifty setup with two filters per unit. There is a vacuum gauge as part of the package. If a filter starts to clog, and alarm goes off in the cockpit and I simply flip a toggle to switch to the other filter.
I used the old Racors as a fuel polishing system. The Filter Boss pickup tubes are about three or four inches off the bottom of the tank. I put the fuel polishing pickup tube about a half inch off the bottom. Diesel fuel is lighter than water, so any water in the tank is on the bottom. And that water was now filling the Racors.
After about an hour, I had the water pretty much out and we hoisted anchor at 9 AM. Because of the amount of water in the tank, I did a filter check every 15 minutes. Every 15 minutes, I had a filter full that I had to drain. I looked at the thermometer. It was pegged at 125 degrees, as high as it went. Eventually, I reduced my filter checks to every half hour. The heat was getting to me.
We pulled in to Brunswick Landing Marina at 2:30. We were met at our dock by Sherri, the dockmaster. It was a perfect landing. 90 degree right turn into the fairway, 90 degree left turn into our slip. Southern Comfort is on our port side and I didn't want to hit him, nor did I want to hit the dock. I nailed it.
Sherri informed us that their 4th of July party was just getting underway. I needed to adjust our dock lines, and Ruby and Chevy needed to go potty. They hadn't gone in two days. Pam and Megan took them up and I did the lines, had a victory beer, and started filling the water tanks.
I went into the engine room to check things. Yep, still pegged at 125. Yep, a Racor full of water. Heck with it, I'll drain it later. I poked my light around the room. I looked at the water pump. It was pumping and didn't need to be primed. Then I saw a stream of water shooting down the wall behind the pump. There was a hose laying there. I picked it up. It had a clamp on the end. It used to go to the pressure tank. I stuck it back on and tightened it up real good.
Why did it come off? It's been there for two years? I finally came up with a theory. The engine room was hotter than it's ever been before. When we arrived at Isle of Hope in February it was cool and the engine room never got over 100 degrees. Now it was well above that. As you know, when things get hot they expand. I'm thinking that the metal clamp expanded, and the pressure tank blew the hose right off sending 200 gallons of water into the bilge.
The three gallons of water the fuel polishing system picked up? Condensation. Lots of condensation.
The marina's party was fun. There's a lot of nice people here, and John and Beth from About Time greeted us. They were transients at Isle of Hope for a few days and joined us for our pot luck dinner.
After the party, we checked out the wifi. It works great! I programmed the TVs using the antenna and we get a couple of dozen channels. That's good enough too, so I don't think we'll sign up for cable. That saves us $25 a month. I'll also cut our Verizon hotspot from 10 GB to 5 GB saving us another $40. Cool beans.
Later that evening, we enjoyed the Brunswick fireworks with new friends Jon and Renne', liveaboards on their Tayana 42 JonNe'. Jon and Renne' are retired, but Renne' writes. She's done mysteries and such, but is now writing a children's series of books about sailing called the "Nighty Night" series. If you have kids or grandkids, I think these would make great gifts. You can check them out on her blog.
I'll be working on the 300 photos we took from Isle of Hope to Brunswick and hope to have them ready for tomorrow's blog.
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