July 17, 2011 Gananoque

I slept in until 7:00 today. It was so nice. There was a 10 knot breeze blowing through our v-berth. It was perfect with under one blanket. I did the blog update, into Word, and made coffee and tea. We just sat out and enjoyed the morning. Breakfast was toasted bread with an egg center cooked in a skillet. Our plan was to leave at 10:00.


Gretchen called about 9:30 and said Lew was dealing with a engine cooling water line filled with seaweed. He had noticed a restricted flow of water coming from his engine while charging the batteries. I thanked Gretchen for telling me and said I would check mine. I had some seaweed in the strainer, but not much. Lew’s cooling water hose was totally impacted, much more than mine, but I figured that was because he had to run his engine for battery charging and sucked up more seaweed as a result. We picked up anchor at 10:00 and were off.

As soon as we were underway I noticed more smoke than water coming from my engine exhaust. I obviously had a clog too. The route to Gananoque from Beaurivage is narrow and curvy so there was no place to just shut the engine off and clean the strainer while the boat just drifted. The engine was not over heating so we motored slowly, about 4 knots to Gananoque. The trip took 45 minutes and covered 2.35 miles.

Once docked I had to deal with 2 problems. First, the engine water intake system that was clogged. The other problem I saw was a small stream of water coming into the bilge from the stern.Lew had disconnected his water intake hose and found it impacted with seaweed. I tried to do that too, but it was impossible. That hose has been on the water intake valve since the boat was built. No way was it going to come off. I borrowed some wire from Lew and ran it through the strainer to the intake valve. It did not clear the seaweed. I opened the valve to the strainer and no water came in. This should have made a direct connection with the lake and water should have gushed in, as if there was a hole in the bottom.

At this point I did not know the problem. It could be that we sucked in seaweed and the hoses to the engine were clogged. Or it could be that the intake hole on the bottom of the boat was clogged, or both. I spent quite a bit of time sticking wires in the hoses with no improvement in water flow. Kerry wanted me to call someone professional to fix the problem. I did not know if I needed a diver or someone to cut the hose off, clear the obstruction, and then install a new hose.

I thought about it over lunch, and determined the best course of action would be to dive under Excalibur and see if there was seaweed clogging the water intake hole. If there was no seaweed there I would know the problem was internal. Of course I was not particularly excited to do this, nor was Kerry. But I do keep a scuba mask on board for such situations and soon had it out.

I estimated where the water intake would be and tied a one end of a line to the boat with the other end in the water so I could pull myself up from under the boat. I lowered the swim ladder, donned the mask and got wet. On my first dive under the boat I saw a huge bunch of seaweed sticking out from the center of the bottom. Since the rest of the area was totally smooth I thought this looked suspicious. Actually, truth be told, I thought it looked like a bunch of toilet paper sticking from someone’s butt, since the hole is at the aft end of the boat and centered. It took two pulls to clear it all out, but in about 20 seconds and on the first dive the problem was solved. I started the engine and water gushed out the exhaust as it should. What a great feeling. The only problem was that I cut the back of my leg on some chain apparatus that held the floating dock to the sea bottom. I came up a little trickle of blood flowing sown my leg. Some paper towels, a sterile wipe and Neosporin were administered by my loyal mate. Speaking of crew, too bad Big Boy Jim Schulz was not here. He never would have let the captain go under the boat. I know he would have insisted taking the plunge for me. The second water leak turned out to be a minor issue with the wash down pump.

We had planned to go to town. But now it was 3:30 and Gretchen had called to say how hot it was getting to town. So, we decided not to go, but just to shower in the marina and have our cocktails. We invited a sailing couple from Toronto, Yarus and Eileen, over to see Excalibur as they were very complementary about her when they were docking. Lew came over while they were here and we discussed boats, anchorages, and the American economy for some time. They left, we had leftovers for dinner, and went to bed. Storms are forecast for the evening.