Decided a quick trip was in order and decided to gamble that Buoyweather was wrong. Buoyweather was both right and wrong! Left Safe Marine just before 8:00 a.m. in the cool morning air to find fairly flat water outside the harbor. Made a bunch of baits about a mile off the point, mostly small sand bass, some sierra, bonefish, and a few macks. Ran out 10 miles to another bait reef, but the macks were hard to come by. Did pick up a dozen sardines, which are good halibut candy. The water was still pretty decent 10 miles out. Punched up the coordinates for the 51 and headed out. About 25 miles out, picked up a stronger breeze and started seeing some four to five foot rollers. Got out to the 51 about 11:30 to find a stiff breeze and still some pretty big waves. Not ideal conditions at all. Well, came all that way, I'm going to fish! Did several drifts, but they were fast drifts. Landed a couple large-model red snappers and missed a few other bites.
Mi amigo Audi showed up in his boat and joined my drift pattern. About my 5th drift, the wife noticed that the back scupper on the deck wasn't draining and water was starting to pool. I opened the access hatch to find LOTS of water, sloshing over the batteries on that side. Great, just great. Turned the bilge pump on, no workee. Okay, that stinks. I had just done a complete systems check last weekend when I replaced all four batteries and EVERYTHING worked as it should. I go to call Audi on the radio and now the radio doesn't work, either. I checked the radio before leaving the harbor (I always do this) and had been talking to Audi on the radio earlier. It looks like it's working, but it's not. Break out the handheld radio and now it doesn't want to transmit, either. This is getting to be a disaster in the making! All this stuff suddenly broken at the same time? WTF??
Okay, I do have a handpump and break that out and start pumping like hell. The wife takes over pumping while I get the boat moving. I pull over by Audi and tell him I'm taking on water and heading in. Between the wife and I, we get the water down off the batteries. The situation is at least manageable. After a lot of pumping, I get an idea and the wife says "Have at it, MacGyver!" I take the hose off the hand pump and insert it into intake of the macerator pump in the fish box and throw the other end over the side. Hit the switch and the macerator (amazing, because it's underwater) kicks on and pumps the bulk of the water over the side. Crisis averted. The boat's now riding level again. And with the water off the batteries, the radio now works fine again. The saltwater must have screwed up the grounding. Time for a beer. Make that TWO beers!
We get about 18 miles out of Penasco and the water is again flat as a pancake. Go figure. So, that was the big adventure this weekend. Thank-goodness it ended well. Keeping a cool head and not succumbing to panic made all the difference. As for where all the water came from, I haven't figured that out yet, but will be all over it this coming weekend. Two theories, one of which has happened before:
1. The bilge pump nipple where you put the hose on it cracked and broke off right at the casing. This allows water to flow in as your sloshing around in heavy seas and happened before on my boat and caused a similar near disaster. Fortunately, there are four separate bilge pumps on the boat - one forward and one aft on each sponson. While we wouldn't normally be in any real danger of sinking, when the back port quadrant gets flooded and floods the batteries, who knows? The biggest danger comes from being swamped by a wave as that corner sits lower in the water, so getting moving right away was key.
2. I redid the pick-up for the bait tank and put a new clamshell thru-hull fitting on. The bait tank now pumps water great underway, which it never did before. The new fitting isn't the problem directly, it's on opposite side of where we were taking on water. When I pulled the handpump out, I notice the bait tank was showering water internally around the edges, so there's a good chance that the water just sloshed out of the bait tank during the trip out to the 51. If that's the case, I need to shorten the drain pipe on it and seal the top of the internal edges. Once I turned the bait tank off and drained it, we didn't seem to take on any more water, so this is the likely culprit. Wouldn't be a problem in flat seas, but when it's rough, it's a lot of sloshing going on.
Whatever the problem, I'll figure it out this weekend. In true form, it's a "boat" - always something! Looking back though, it's easy to see how things cascade in a hurry and cause boats to sink. Having a buddy boat out there with you is the safest thing you can do.
Mi amigo Audi showed up in his boat and joined my drift pattern. About my 5th drift, the wife noticed that the back scupper on the deck wasn't draining and water was starting to pool. I opened the access hatch to find LOTS of water, sloshing over the batteries on that side. Great, just great. Turned the bilge pump on, no workee. Okay, that stinks. I had just done a complete systems check last weekend when I replaced all four batteries and EVERYTHING worked as it should. I go to call Audi on the radio and now the radio doesn't work, either. I checked the radio before leaving the harbor (I always do this) and had been talking to Audi on the radio earlier. It looks like it's working, but it's not. Break out the handheld radio and now it doesn't want to transmit, either. This is getting to be a disaster in the making! All this stuff suddenly broken at the same time? WTF??
Okay, I do have a handpump and break that out and start pumping like hell. The wife takes over pumping while I get the boat moving. I pull over by Audi and tell him I'm taking on water and heading in. Between the wife and I, we get the water down off the batteries. The situation is at least manageable. After a lot of pumping, I get an idea and the wife says "Have at it, MacGyver!" I take the hose off the hand pump and insert it into intake of the macerator pump in the fish box and throw the other end over the side. Hit the switch and the macerator (amazing, because it's underwater) kicks on and pumps the bulk of the water over the side. Crisis averted. The boat's now riding level again. And with the water off the batteries, the radio now works fine again. The saltwater must have screwed up the grounding. Time for a beer. Make that TWO beers!
We get about 18 miles out of Penasco and the water is again flat as a pancake. Go figure. So, that was the big adventure this weekend. Thank-goodness it ended well. Keeping a cool head and not succumbing to panic made all the difference. As for where all the water came from, I haven't figured that out yet, but will be all over it this coming weekend. Two theories, one of which has happened before:
1. The bilge pump nipple where you put the hose on it cracked and broke off right at the casing. This allows water to flow in as your sloshing around in heavy seas and happened before on my boat and caused a similar near disaster. Fortunately, there are four separate bilge pumps on the boat - one forward and one aft on each sponson. While we wouldn't normally be in any real danger of sinking, when the back port quadrant gets flooded and floods the batteries, who knows? The biggest danger comes from being swamped by a wave as that corner sits lower in the water, so getting moving right away was key.
2. I redid the pick-up for the bait tank and put a new clamshell thru-hull fitting on. The bait tank now pumps water great underway, which it never did before. The new fitting isn't the problem directly, it's on opposite side of where we were taking on water. When I pulled the handpump out, I notice the bait tank was showering water internally around the edges, so there's a good chance that the water just sloshed out of the bait tank during the trip out to the 51. If that's the case, I need to shorten the drain pipe on it and seal the top of the internal edges. Once I turned the bait tank off and drained it, we didn't seem to take on any more water, so this is the likely culprit. Wouldn't be a problem in flat seas, but when it's rough, it's a lot of sloshing going on.
Whatever the problem, I'll figure it out this weekend. In true form, it's a "boat" - always something! Looking back though, it's easy to see how things cascade in a hurry and cause boats to sink. Having a buddy boat out there with you is the safest thing you can do.
