More on the Oct 2002 Cruise
Roger Caldwell

We are back from our Oct. trip.  The trip was pleasant and we had excellent weather.

The were several maintenance problems.  One boat (twin) lost one engine due to a radiator hose clamp breaking, thus loosing cooling.  A second boat lost a transmission and since this was a single it lost all power.   A third boat lost its only engine due to a solenoid failure.

Our boat was plagued with water problems.

We we did our bilge check just before leaving there was a little more water in the bilge than there should have been.  Upon checking out the problem, I found out that the bilge pump switch was defective and the fresh water tank was almost empty.

I replaced the switch with my spare, filled the fresh water tank and we were off and running.

It seemed like the bilge was running too often.  By Ft Myers things in the bilge were covered by spray from a cracked fresh water (hot water) pipe.  I shut down the fresh water pump and planned to use bottled water until I was able to fix the pipe.

On to St. George's Harbor.  Here I found that I was able to turn off the valve in front of the hot water tank and this was able to restore at lease cold water.  All was well and we continued on the trip.

However it still seemed like the bilge pump was running too often.  I was blaming it on the air conditioners, which discharge their condensate into the bilge.  After several days we were at Captiva Island and I let the middle saloon A/C drip into a container for 30 minutes and based upon the amount that was discharged I calculated that the combination of all three A/C's were discharging about 1/2 gal per hour into the bilge, this accounting for the excessive operation of the bilge pump.

On the last couple of nights, it still seemed like the bilge pump was discharging more, but the temperature at night at lease was a little cooler.

The last marina was in Stuart and I explored more.  While at dockside (the engine room was still warm though) I crawled across the top of the Starboard Battery and the generator Battery.  By squeezing my head against the starboard side of the boat I was able to barely see a steady trickle of water coming off the starboard exhaust hose.  Perhaps as much as 10 gal per hour.  I was not positive that the water was coming from the hose or running down the outside of the hose from somewhere else.

I fashioned (jury rigged) a 3" diameter plug from a plastic drinking glass and stuck it into the starboard exhaust outlet, (which was about halfway under water).

The plug greatly reduced the trickle.  At this point I was glad I had found the leak but undecided about what to do about it.  My options were to:
        a.  Call a local mechanic for help...(not likely).
        b.  Find a nearby yard to haul the boat...(not a desirable thing in my mind)
        c.  Continue on the next morning to the Riverside marina boat yard in Ft. Pierce (my normal hauling place) which was nearer my destination.
        d.  Continue home and work the problem after I got home.  This option would allow me to unload the boat from the trip at the Vero Beach Yacht Club where my car was before proceeding on to a Yard.


I decided to call Riverside Marine.  They said that they would be happy to haul me, but that I would have to tie up and wait until they got their broken lift fixed.  They would know more the next morning.

I left the plug in the starboard exhaust outlet overnight and the leak was totally stopped.

Given that we had to do a huge amount of unloading from the boat, that I did not like having anyone else work on my boat and that the lift at Riverside was down I tentatively decided to continue on to the Vero Beach Yacht Club to unload, an then take the boat to a yard.

I had not smelled any diesel fumes during any of my engine room checks throughout the entire 15 days, so I figured that the damage in the exhaust tube was not too bad.  The leaking seemed to mainly occur dockside so I thought that the exhaust was blowing the water out and not allowing much to leak.  I was somewhat concerned about the possibility that the hose might rupture completely dockside or underway and then I would have a 3" hole opening to the sea water.  I was sure that the bilge pump would not be able to keep up that possibility.  I did not want to run the entire distance home on one engine with the starboard exhaust outlet plugged.  So I planned to watch bilge pump activity, make frequent engine room checks and it a problem occurred I would shutdown the starboard engine and plug the exhaust outlet.

And so we headed home.  While steaming home we checked with Riverside and the lift was now operational, but we continue our way home and made plans to return to Riverside the next day. Upon arrival home we plugged the starboard outlet just as soon as we shutdown the engine and unloaded the boat.  By unloading the boat we removed enough weight so that now the engine outlet was now about 1/2 inch above the water.

The next day we took the boat down to the Riverside boat yard and hauled it.

The next day a friend and I removed the exhaust tube.  It was severely damaged.  In the process of removal the tube easily broke half way open.
  Thus my fears of a complete rupture were well founded.

 We were fortunate to have completed the trip without a major tragedy.

The morals of this story are.
        1.  If you are taking on water, with a possibility of the amount increasing the best bet it to go to the nearest yard.

        2.  If an exhaust is leaking any significant amount it could probably fail catastrophically at any time.

        3.  Inspect your exhaust hoses, especially where it is hard to inspect them.

        4.  Have plugs for your exhaust outlets.


Roger Caldwell