Cut free. And a midnight visit.

[luckytroll]

Just before bedtime my worries about the stream of water coming in via the prop-shaft reached critical mass. mon_chou  figured it might be better to check things on Impertinent, so we drove to the boat and checked the bilges.
Im kinda glad I did.


Bilge 1 was full to overflowing. Bilge 2 was hard to see as it is under the engine drip-catcher, but a sounding stick shoved 3.4 way into it came back dry. The pilge pump in the cockpit sucks out of that bilge too, and it was drawing just air.
However, the primary bilge - the one with the big huge bilge pumps in it, had about a litre of water. Thats pretty unsettling - usually that bilge is so dry I could store toilet paper down there.

First things first, we emptied the sail locker, and took out the divider and I crawled in with a socket wrench and tightened the stuffing box down until I was only getting a couple drops every 10 seconds or so. Then we dragged out the big whale pump - a large plastic bodied diaphragm pump that has done yeomans work emptying all the bilges in the 2004 deck-drain fiasco, and pumped out the aft bilges in a matter of minutes.

This morning we gathered the SCUBA gear and drove to the boat. I dove into murky water with visibility of about 1 foot, perhaps 2 at best - and cut the ropes that were wrapping the propeller. Unfortunately, when the ropes got wrapped - they pulled the mooring chain into the fray too. It wasnt too hard to dislodge, but it did put a sharp and ugly dime sized meathook on the propeller edge. Hoping I can hone that back into something that wont cause too much vibration and cavitation.

I surfaced when the job was done, then donned the fins and did a swim-around to check the rest of the boat, and to make sure none of the line-bits I had cut free were floating around waiting to give someone else trouble. Despite the near zero viz, and the initial cold of the water settling into the wetsuit, it was a nice dive. The new dive knife  I bought last night was awesome in slicing through the nylon doclines that wrapped.

When the prop was freed, it turned freely. mon_chou  checked the packing gland, and only a few more drips were coming in. After checking everything else out, we tried the engine and it is fine. The transmission may still be fucked - I did not try engaging it in berth - but I am hoping the most of the damage from this excitement will be a dinged prop and a couple chopped up docklines.

Morals of the story - stay well clear of lines when the prop spins (duh). Also - wetsuits are your friend. Also - I still love diving, even in zero viz, and even when there is a job to be done. 

In the end, I wound up renting a regulator and hood from sharkys when I rented the two tanks. I may end up buying a hood, as it is probably the only thing I am missing  for cool water diving besides gloves. I am holding off on buying a regset - as those need regular maintenance, and I figure that I wont be diving that much until I take off - whenever that happens.

So, another frustration and another adventure.

Comments

[freefloat.livejournal.com]

Besides, regs (and tanks) are very easy to find to rent in most any port of call - but not every place will have serviceable hoods/gloves, and sometimes, the "only" one you can find won't fit. Definitely invest in your own hood first.