Welcome back dear readers. When we last saw our young lovers, they were staring at an engine wondering if their precious boat had sprung a leak, and which valuable items they would have to grab first-
Kidding, of course. The end of this story does not come with a wreck, not even a few tears or one of those quiet arguments with raised eyebrows and pinched lips but DEFINITELY no words.
In fact, we don’t really have an end to this story yet, which is one of the reasons I put off typing this blog. When there’s one thing wrong with a boat, there’s usually two or three more things, and if you continue following the trail of tasks, you can easily spend the whole day and your vacation savings trying to get to the bottom of it.
Our engine compartment had water in it because the engine was pumping sea water in. Our through hull was jammed, so the water wasn’t being drained out by the starboard bilge pump. But the bilge pump itself is also on the fritz, and wasn’t properly sensing water levels, sometimes remaining on automatic pumping mode when no water was there, or else drowning in sea water while taking a nap on the job. Is this making sense to you? If not- I empathize.
After this problem was noted, we found water in the starboard shower, when no one had showered there.
What felt like a one-off problem had either multiplied into three problems- or they were maybe all related. Could it be a coincidence- all this water entering the boat?
Paul brought out the manual and sat looking at schematics. I googled “boat has water in it” and then quickly closed the search browser- the results I got were similar to when you have a headache and WebMD tells you that you have late stage face cancer and you might as well give up all hope now.
After a bit of speculation, a break for a cocktail, and a meeting of the minds, Paul took me to the port-side bilge pump and showed me how it worked. We like the port side because it’s the side we live on, “the girl side” of the boat, and also, Paul can stand there without his shoulders touching both walls. Becoming acquainted with the bilge pump was fine. I was able to grab it and understand its important job, without handily understanding its secret inner workings. We cheekily named the bilge pump unit “the toaster” because of boxy shape and need for electricity to fulfill its purpose. Feeling confident we left the “girl side” of the boat.
We ventured over the Starboard of the boat, AKA the Boy Side, Aka the guest side, AKA the much more narrow hull, with a hallway that forces you to walk sideways like a crab as you pass. Our water filter is on this side, a cleaning job that Paul has delegated to me because I “fit easier” on the SB side, but consequently we visit the starboard side less because it’s a tight squeeze and we sleep on the port side. I crawled onto the floor and lifted the covers onto the through hulls and the bilge looked up at Paul, who stood staring down at me from the galley.
“I want to blast water in there with the hose”, he said, to which I said … “ok” because I truly didn’t know if adding more water to the situation would worsen anything, or if it would help. So Paul went and got the hose, and handed it in through the window, and I sprayed it into the bilge. At first blush this achieved what you would expect spraying a hose into a bathtub would achieve….i.e. water started to pool in the lowest spot. Then, the SB toaster/bilge pump activated and pumped out the water (to where you may ask, we will get there). Finally the inner/under workings of the pipes and hoses and nozzles and handles that run below our floor boards started making a bit of sense. “take that hose and shoot water up that other hose,” Paul said. What could go wrong? While I’m down on hands and knees in the deep of the boat I heard Paul jumping around upstairs “OK, stop. Now is water coming in from where you were shooting it?”
Side note. Before we attempted this “hose method” Paul had been hypothesizing a coat-hanger, poky, dental-floss to a pipe cleaner solution, which honestly to me- felt a bit excessive. But as I’ve never fixed a boat, I felt open to suggestion.
Good news is that the hose to hose trick cleared the blockage coming from the engine compartment. Now it was able to drain as God intended it and then be pumped out of our boat by the bilge/toaster as Lagoon’s designers intended it.
High fives (maverik-goose style) all around, we celebrated our ability to problem-solve. Did we solve all three of our current starboard issues, or just two or maybe only one? Time would tell -but for now, we could ensure one thing: we weren’t sinking. And I felt ready that when our first guest arrived in a few days that the “Tintas” wouldn’t disappoint- or disappear down under.
TIBURON MARINO 