Sunrise on Galveston Bay.....makes it all worth while!!!
Expecting Galveston Bay to be rough we left early (6:30 am) before the predicted wind increase and still had 3 to 4 foot waves with the occasional salt water spray over the bow and front windows. A short 40 minutes later we eased into the intracoastal entrance at Bolivar Peninsula and our rocky-rolly ride completely smoothed out. Finally, it seemed that our excursion was going to take a turn for the better and our boat problems were behind us......NOT! The first indication that the future had more difficulties in store for us became evident when we noticed that our speed at 1200 rpm had slowed from 9.1 knots to 7.3. Oh, we are against the tide and wind, that explains it....MAYBE! We motored on. Smooth sailing across to the Neches River, I decided to "blow out the pipes and warm up the motors as suggested by Mark, the mechanic at Pier 77.(so maybe I can blame it on him?)... No, we didn't ground out! What I noticed was that despite the engines going to 2300rpm the speed came up to only 14 knots. Hmm, wind on our nose, tide against us?....MAYBE!
We slowed down on our approach to Adams bayou and gingerly travelled up as far as the Sabine yacht club basin.(For the most part it was destroyed by hurricane Ike, even though there are several house boats and sailboats still docked there...free!) I decided to not enter, instead preferring to anchor in the middle of the bayou. Finally, peace; a cocktail of rum and coke with lime ,quiet, solitude, nature, ducks flying by overhead, creatures making noises in the nearby marshes, a lonely water moccasin swimming by...yuck (and it excited Beth!) Lets check the generator room before we have dinner. Oh, where is this water coming from? Why isn't the bilge pump keeping things dry? Lets check the other bilge pumps..Where is all this water coming from? Damn, we are taking on water as fast as the bilge pumps can pump it out!
No we weren't sinking, but at the very least it might explain why we couldn't get the boat up to speed or up on plane....we had at least 100 gallons of water in the bilge! Did we have a hole in the boat? Were the shafts pulled loose because of the grounding? Why are we just noticing this now??
Can you guess what the answer might be?
Well here is what we figured out. First of all, the boat is heavily loaded, almost Beverly Hillbilly Style, especially after taking on another 184 gallons of fuel in Galveston. As well, the boat has a slight list to the port side, where the bilges pump out. The bilge pump did not have a check valve to prevent water from coming back into the boat, so with the outlet under water, when the pump stopped pumping, water siphoned back into the boat! Think this is unlikely? Well we confirmed it by using Beth!
Once we saw that water was coming back out of the pump, we got Beth,along with Mildred and me (Tom doesn't weigh enough to make any difference and we needed him to watch the pump) to stand and lean out over the starboard side of the boat. This allowed air to enter the bilge pump hose and break the suction and siphoning. It worked! The pump is off until we can install a check valve in the outflow line and re balance the boat. The other pumps will take care of the bilge water.
Somewhat surprisingly, the rest of the night was peaceful. We all slept well--mental exhaustion might have something to do with it (along with a few more cocktails!)-and we had perfectly still water. Tomorrow, on to Louisiana and the Mermenteau River.
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