The Blue View - When It All Goes Wrong

Most of our passage from Puerto Rico to St. Augustine was idyllic – a nice broad reach with 15-20 knots of wind, a kindly following sea, warm sunny weather, a 0.5 to 2 knot favorable current, and a full moon to sail by at night. The prop shaft generator and solar panels were producing more power than we needed and nothing major had broken. We couldn't have asked for a more perfect passage – at least for the first six days.

Marcie's blog yesterday talked about how things can quickly change. And when things start going wrong, usually it happens just as the wind picks up, at night and in the middle of the shipping channels – and usually the problems come in multiples. Our first problem was a transmission leak. Without our engine, we could have beat our way to the St. Augustine inlet, but with wind on the nose and the gulf stream current pushing us NE, this would have taken awhile. Then once we arrived, we would have needed a tow to make our way through the narrow, dog-legged inlet – an expensive option. A much better option would be to figure out the transmission problem.

One possibility was the heat exchanger. It is about the size of a half empty roll of paper towels. Sea water is passed through the heat exchanger, and the transmission oil is cooled by pumping it through a coil of tubing that is immersed in the water. Over time, the inner tubing deteriorates and eventually begins leaking. Since the oil is under pressure, it will leak out into the sea water. Usually, once the engine is shut down, sea water will leak back into the tubing, filling the transmission. I wasn't getting seawater into the transmission, but I thought the heat exchanger might still be the culprit. I try to change the heat exchangers every three years, but this one had been in place more than four years and was overdue.

I had a spare, and it took only a few minutes to dig it out. To remove and replace the old one, I had to first remove a shelf in the aft part of the engine room that holds a bin of miscellaneous engine spares as well as my compressor. The rest of the R & R process took about an hour, and all together, the whole thing took maybe 90 minutes for the entire procedure. It went well and without a hitch – always a bad sign.

We topped up the transmission oil and started up the engine. I didn't see anything leaking, so we motored for an hour, then I checked the oil level again. Yikes! It was down another quart. We have three hydraulic hoses connected to the transmission – two that go to the heat exchanger and one that operates the prop shaft brake. With the shelf out I had a better view of the hoses, and I saw a small collection of oil on the hose for the prop brake. I removed it, and sure enough, there was a crack in the underside of one of the fittings.

We could do without the hose if I could figure out a way to plug the hole it was screwed into on the transmission. I rooted around in my various parts bins and finally found a brass hose barb adapter with the right size male thread. Using a bolt, nut and copious amounts of Permatex Gasket Maker (the type impervious to transmission and engine oil), I made a plug for the hole that would withstand the pressure. I screwed it into place, topped up the oil, and we motored for another hour. When I checked the oil level again, the good news was that the oil level seemed to be holding. The bad news was that the engine room was awash in seawater. While I was trying to figure out where it was coming from, the high water bilge alarm went off.

There is an old adage that there is no better bilge pump than a panicked sailor with a bucket. While we weren't quite at the panic level, it was obvious we needed to handle the problem. I closed all the seacocks that could possibly be feeding water into the engine room then we turned on both electric bilge pumps, Marcie began pumping the manual bilge pump, and I worked at bailing out the engine room. Even so, we were barely keeping up with the water ingress. Where the hell was all that water coming from?

Then I spotted the culprit. The prop shaft seal, which is located well aft of the engine room, has a vent hose that should be led up above the water line. I had routed it to the top of the engine room and secured it in place with cable ties. Apparently, when I removed the shelf, I inadvertently pulled it loose from the cable ties. It stayed in place for awhile, but the vibration from the engine caused it to slide down and the end eventually came to rest on the engine room floor – well below the waterline. It was a quick fix to put it back where it belonged, and this time I made sure it could never come loose again.

It took another half hour to pump out all the water and clear the engine room. After checking everything one last time, we were on our way. We checked the transmission oil every hour for several hours, and it was no longer losing oil.

What I took away from all this was that while it was nice to be able to find and repair the transmission leak problem, I am most embarrassed that I didn't properly secure the vent line, causing an emergency situation.

Looking at the bright side, we did get to test the high water bilge alarm and all three bilge pumps, which, happily, all worked.

Culebra to St. Augustine - Arrival

By all calculations, we should have reached our destination by early this morning, but we haven't. The sea gods, in their ongoing quest for amusement, had some tricks up their proverbial sleeves and provided a few challenges before allowing us to reach St. Augustine.

First of all, the weather forecast (all of them) has been all over the place. The predicted light S/SW winds were in fact northerly and right on the nose. We were concerned that crossing the Gulf Stream, wind against current, would pose some problems. We opted to motor due west across the strongest part of the current.

We noticed the intermittent “racing” of the engine at the same moment … just after dinner. It only happened a couple of times and we figured perhaps the wave action might be causing it (wishful thinking), but to be prudent, we killed the engine and David checked out the transmission fluid, previously checked just before leaving Culebra. The level barely registered on the dipstick. Why? He prodded and poked and checked and narrowed it down to the heat exchanger which was overdue for replacement. He had, of course, a spare aboard. We hove-to while he located it, removed the old and installed the new and wiped down the engine … all in a record 90 minutes. We topped up the fluid and resumed motoring for an hour.

We killed the engine once again to check the transmission. The fluid was down more than half. A more careful examination of every hose and clamp and he found some oil and a tiny split on the back side of the prop brake hydraulic hose. We've got at least 10 spare hydraulic hoses aboard, but none that would fit. Luckily, this was one we could do without and David fashioned a plug that worked like a charm. We resumed motoring and stopped in an hour to check the fluid. Still down some, but not as much as before. We topped up and motored another hour. There was no sleep to be had.

Another hour … another stop. The fluid level was down a tiny bit, however, the engine sump was filled with water! Just as David commented on the water situation, the hi-water alarm sounded. This was concurrent, of course, with lightning and an increase in wind to 25+ knots on the nose. I put the bilge pump on and commenced working the manual pump while David bailed in the engine room to find the source of the leak. He found it, corrected the problem and we continued to trudge on. At 0600, we were still 40+ nm out and exhausted.

Ah, but there's a happy ending. By Noon, the wind and sea began to calm. The transmission fluid was holding steady. There was much jubilation when the St. Augustine sea buoy came into view.

We followed the well-marked channel through the St. Augustine Inlet and into the Matanzas River. We hailed the bridgekeeper and passed through the Bridge of Lions bascule bridge at the 1430 opening.

Mooring #35 was waiting for us. Another safe landing … what more can you ask for? A nap and a cold beer!

Total passage miles: 1131 nm

Culebra to St. Augustine - Days 7-8

Day 7 - 278 nm to go

Thick clouds on the horizon made for a blazing, orange-pink sunrise this morning. The sun only peeked through a small hole of the dense clouds to check out the day, then disappeared altogether, as if deciding whether or not he would shine today … evidently not. He left us with a grey, overcast day.

The wind god is on holiday. I watched he wind indicator needle trying hopelessly to settle on a wind direction, but with 0 knots, it plays spin the bottle with the compass directions, but finds no direction to kiss.

We've been motoring the past 24 ours with nary a breath of breeze other than what wind we're generating ourselves. The mighty Atlantic is as calm and benign as a duck pond and Cups cuts through the water like the metaphorical hot knife through butter.

A white-tailed tropic bird, its long, graceful single white-feathered tail distinguishing it from all other sea birds, circled the boat several times. I was hoping it might land (versus a poop-filled noddy), but after careful surveillance of Cups, it flew off looking for a better ride.

The moon is full now and she's glowing brilliantly when we can see her. There have been showers and some lightning to the west of us and the clouds obscure our view.

Day 8 – 126 nm to go

We've been checking the tide tables for entering the St. Augustine Inlet which tends toward shoaling. With the full moon, the high will be higher and the low will be lower. We're hoping it will be calm for entry. We have two different tide predictors and they disagree significantly … by about 6 hours. We had to email a cruising friend in Florida to verify which tide table was correct.

I won't bore you with too many Day 8 details, other than to say “Only 126 miles to go – Hooray”. We alternated motoring and sailing throughout the night and day with fickle winds that blew and stopped as if on a timetable. There were squalls during the night and lightning cut through the skies all around us. Our days begin and end at 1000 when we consult our log and calculate the daily mileage. I usually collect our thoughts and impressions on the past 24 hours and those become our passage notes. Little did we know that the last day of this pleasant passage would be the most challenging. Stay tuned!