Great Adventures

This past Monday was Columbus Day, where we recognize the single most fantastic example of dead luck navigation (referenced in "Maiden Voyage") in the history of mankind.  Of course it's also a great time to ponder the advantages of suppression and annihilation of indigenous peoples.  Being a four day weekend for me and Cheri, we pondered the cold weather coming soon and headed over to the Annapolis Boat Show on Friday to talk to some guys about marine heaters.  Great ponderers that we are, we'd already narrowed our choices down to two manufacturers of forced air diesel heaters (Espar and Webasto).  They're both very similar in construction.  The concept is the same as the gas heater in your home, fire heats air which is blown through ducting to each room.  These are much smaller though, contained in a 7" x 21" cylinder.  The heater will go under the cockpit and have ducting running inside cabinetry on the port side of the boat.  Should be a fairly simple installation so I'm going to take it on myself.  Oughta get a few blog entries outa that!

The weather this weekend was simply gorgeous and on Sunday we had our friends Anthony and Luzma over for the afternoon.  We got them to come under the ruse of teaching us how to use some Spanish language software.  What we really wanted was an excuse to go out sailing.  After talking about software for 10 minutes we cast off around 1530 and sailed out across Herring Bay and out into the Chesapeake.  Winds were about 15 to 20 knots out of the West so we headed North for a while  before turning around and heading home.  For some reason I was thinking the sun set around 1900 but it was already ducking behind the trees at 1830 as we rounded red #2 on the way back to Herrington Harbour.  We pulled into our slip just as it was getting dark.  After getting things back to "in port" mode we sat down to a great Peruvian dinner of grilled chicken with some potato kinda stuff and some screaming hot sauce to dip it in.  Wowza!

On Monday morning we had Karl and Cindi Ervin join us for a sail.  They live on the boat two slips out from us and are totally rebuilding their boat.  Because of the extensive reconstruction they haven't been sailing in two years.  We thought it'd be a good excuse to go out again and also to make some new friends.  Once again the weatherman was calling for light winds, 5 to 6 knots, but when we got out there we had 15 to 20 knots out of the South.  Perfect!  We headed over to the North end of Poplar Island, right at the mouth of Eastern Bay (Link to Chart of the Bay).  It's my understanding that Poplar Island is man-made and is where they dump all the dredged up material from the main channel.  We sailed past R 84A which marks the eastern side of the main channel for large ships traveling up the Bay to Baltimore.  This is an interesting spot for navigation because the main channel comes up from the mouth of the Bay along the western shore.  Just before it gets to Herring Bay it crosses over to the eastern shore and continues up to the Bay Bridge.  Ships travel the Bay at a pretty good clip, at least 20 knots, and you really have to keep an eye on things to stay out of their way.

We had passed R 84A and headed into Eastern Bay when I took a look at my watch and realized we should head back if we were going to get in before dark.  We came about and returned on a course of 240 degrees magnetic.  As we got past Poplar Island I noticed a large ship far to the South headed up the Bay.  We were moving along at about 7 knots and I felt we could probably hold our course and come in behind this big dude.  As we passed R 84A again and ventured into the channel I kept my eye on the ship, which was now beginning to look quite large.  As I watched, it's bow began to come around and point directly at us and I quickly realized he was in the section of channel that crosses over to where we were.  Yikes!  We came about again and veered out of his way and then as he passed close by, came about again to resume our course which took us right across his stern as he passed by.  The stern wave from this sucka was pretty big and we almost buried the bow on the second wave.  Woohoooo!

The sail back to Herrington was really nice with a steady 15 to 20 knot breeze.  We sailed right up to R2, passing several other boats that were motoring their way home (not that I'm competitive of course).  After passing R2 we dropped our sails and motored towards home.  As we passed the halfway point, G3, I noticed a change in pitch of the engine.  I looked over the stern and saw there was no water coming out the exhaust.  I reduced throttle and ran below.  When I pulled the engine cover back in the galley I found water swirling around under the engine.  I ran over to the other side and pulled open the engine cover and got blasted by water.  I yelled up to kill the engine but with it off I was unable to find the source of the leak.  We fired it back up again and quickly found that the raw water cooling hose on the heat exchanger had blown off and was gushing like Old Faithful.  It turned out that the hose clamp had failed which was better than having the hose itself blow out.  Karl put the hose back on as I grabbed a clamp from one of the lines on the holding tank up forward.  He installed the clamp and we fired up the engine and headed into the harbor at low RPM's to keep the pressure down.  Just as we came inside the jetty at the entrance to the harbor the hose blew off again.  This is a much worse spot because the channel here is very narrow with shallow water on either side.  We shut the engine off long enough to get the hose back on and Karl held it in place until we could drift up to the first dock we came to.  Once tied up we shut off the engine and Karl replaced the hose clamp.  He told me the clamp wasn't on very well the first time but he got it on better the second try.  We motored slowly home and felt very relieved to be tied up in our slip again.

So now I've got another project.  I need to pull the hose and either replace it or clean it out because Karl noticed that it was seriously calcified inside.  This probably means that the heat exchanger needs some attention too.  Might as well take a look at the impeller while I'm at it.  One other thing.  Underneath the engine is a fiberglass pan that's intended to catch oil drippings and because of that does not drain into the bilge.  I found that it holds approximately 12 gallons of water.  I filled up my 5 gallon bucket two and a half times, dipping water out from in front of the engine with a 6 ounce plastic cup until 2100 last night.  Are we having fun yet?  You betcha!