6 days of nonstop travel

Here is what our last week looked like:

Monday, Oct. 21 – Annapolis, MD to Rose Haven, MD- 17nm
Tuesday, Oct 22 – Rose Haven,MD to Tilghman Island, MD – 18.5nm
Wednesday, Oct 23 – Tilghman Island, MD to Cockrell Creek, MD – 62.5nm
Thursday, Oct 24 – Cockrell Creek, MD to Norfolk, MD – 60nm
Friday, Oct 25 – Norfolk, MD to Buck Island, NC – 64nm
Saturday, Oct 26 – Buck Island, NC to Belhaven, NC – 70nm

Monday was a short day because we were headed for Harrington Harbor South, a marina where our friend on Brio II were staying while they fix up their new (to them) boat. We also needed to do laundry, shower, and dispose of our trash and used oil.  It was great to have the crew of Brio II over for dinner and to catch up with them. After dinner Leah took me to the grocery store to provision.  

Tuesday was a short day because we got out of the marina later than planned, around 12pm, and not long after we left we realized we were taking on quite a bit of water.  Our ‘dripless’ stuffing box was gushing water into our bilge.  We were able to stop it by throttling back the engine to only 2000rpm.  

Wednesday we headed south again, thinking we may have fixed the stuffing box issue. Typically the issue when water is coming in is that there is foreign material caught in the stuffing box, between the carbon plate and the stainless plate that are supposed to created a water-tight seal.  But if foreign material from the water (sand, seaweed, etc.) gets caught it causes a leak.  I had cleaned and flushed the stuffing box the night before.  All day Wednesday we had no leaking problems while the engine was running, so we thought we were in the clear.

Nothing is ever that easy on a boat though.  While we had no problem on Wednesday, or Thursday with the stuffing box.  Come Friday, though, the problem was back. It was leaking only when in neutral or when the engine was off.  So for most the day we were fine, as we were motoring all day.  However we did end up waiting over 2 hours for a bridge and a lock collectively, and while we were waiting it was leaking again.

Saturday it got even worse.  Not only did we wake up to boat covered in bugs that pooped green all over our deck, but it took us the whole 10 hour motor to get rid of 99% of them. There are still a few lingering over 36 hours later. At least they were midges and not mosquitos so they weren’t trying to eat us all day.

We motored all day and it didn’t matter if we were in forward, reverse, or neutral, it was gushing water all day.  Our aft bilge pump is a tough worker, and worked through the day to keep the bilge from overflowing. When we stopped for the night in Belhaven, we jury rigged it to stop leaking for the overnight.  As we arrived on Saturday, and we are in the South, nothing opened on Sunday until noon, and the hardware store didn’t open until 1pm. 

Our last adventure of six days of almost non-stop travel was about 2 ft from our dock for the night. 

We ran aground.  There’s a first time for every boat right?

In trying to see if the town dock was full (it was) as we tried to turn around to exit the town pier we ran aground.  With the help of 3 fellow boaters, a boat hook and a lot of reverse, we finally got free.  As we were backing up to leave the cut where the town dock is, one of our helpers mentioned that the side we were on, across from the dock, was fine to tie up on as well.  So after backing 30ft behind the shallow spot, we tied to the pilings and called it a night.   

We took the morning to wash the deck (in the rain) to rid it of midge carcasses, and to take a family walk to provision and work on Halloween costumes for the kids.  Once we returned to the boat the rain came again, and we held off on trying to fix the stuffing box (attached to the large metal prop shaft) as the thunderstorm rolled through, for safety purposes. We have now fixed the stuffing box, and will be off again tomorrow morning heading for Oriental, NC.

More details on the problem with our dripless stuffing box and how we handled and fixed it in the next post!