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| Sue at the helm, leaving Bahia del Perro at sunrise |
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| View of Islas Cholludo and Datil to starboard as we motor southeast |
There was no escaping the wind and swells as we chugged southeastward. We had taken a few crashing waves over the dodger, so when Sue went below around 7:30 a.m. to use the head, she wasn't surprised to see a puddle of water at the foot of the companionway stairs. Coming out of the head, however, she was surprised to see water on the cabin sole up by the forepeak. No obvious overhead leaks -- all hatches and portlights were dogged down. She tasted the puddle: salt. Never a good sign inside a boat. Lifting a floor hatch to check the bilge, Sue found it completely flooded, up to the cabin sole, and shouted the bad news up to Curtis.
Over the next few minutes, we got very busy. Figuring that the automatic bilge pump was either overwhelmed or not functioning, we started working the manual bilge pump in the cockpit. It was a Whale Gusher, rated at 25 gallons per minute. Curtis pumped steadily for 10 minutes, and we could see that he was gaining on the leak. Meanwhile, Sue checked every thru-hull and seacock on the boat, closing a few just for good measure, but nothing was amiss. The raw-water strainer looked normal. We hadn't felt a collision of any kind. She readied our dry bags with emergency supplies in case we had to abandon ship and get in the dinghy. Then she took over from Curtis on the manual pump, and he lifted the engine compartment cover in the cockpit.
"Our shaft seal has burst," he announced. We both peered into the engine compartment and saw water hemorrhaging from the shredded rubber boot into the bilge. The function of a shaft seal is to prevent seawater from entering the boat where the propeller shaft exits the hull. Our shaft seal was a PSS Dripless Shaft Seal, an accordion-style, "dripless" alternative to the traditional packing gland seen on many boats. It was about a year old.
We took turns operating the Whale Gusher. While Sue pumped, Curtis tried various means of compressing and clamping the burst seal to slow the leak. When Sue needed a rest, Curtis took over, and she continued emergency preparations. We discussed our options, none of them good: The nearest marina with the depth and equipment to haul out Cilantro was San Carlos, some 90 miles ahead of us to the southeast. Bahia Kino, 20 miles to our northeast, was a shallow bay with no haul-out facilities. We would be safe there, but we would have to let Cilantro sink in deep water or run aground on a sandy shoal, either of which meant resigning ourselves to total or near total loss of her. If we couldn't slow the leak, motoring to San Carlos would require continuous pumping for 15 to 18 hours. That didn't seem feasible.
Curtis climbed back down into the engine compartment. He noticed a small flexible hose leading from the engine to the shaft seal. The shaft seal had been installed with pressurized water from the raw water system, and now that the seal had burst, it was this pressurized seawater that was flooding the boat. He reached over and squeezed a kink into the hose -- the leak slowed to a strong trickle! Several wraps of tape and cable ties later, we were celebrating the first positive news. Water was still flowing in along the seal interface, but between the automatic bilge pump and periodic manual pumping (every 30 minutes or so now), we could easily keep up with it. Motoring on autopilot, we actually had time to relax a little and think about what to do next. Returning to San Carlos still seemed our best option. [Note: shutting off the engine would have depressurized the raw water hose and slowed the leak even more, but Curtis was concerned that he might not be able to start it again, and we would be left with sail power only, into strong headwinds.]
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| Curtis in Cilantro's engine compartment, with shaft seal at his feet |
In the afternoon, our concern turned to fuel. Before leaving the boatyard, we had jerry-jugged diesel from the nearby Pemex station to Cilantro. After several trips back and forth, and especially after hoisting each jug up the 10-foot ladder, we figured that two-thirds of a tank plus two 6-gallon jugs should be plenty for the short cruise we had planned. What we hadn't factored in was today's long hours of motoring into wind, heavy seas, and current. At the rate we were probably burning through diesel, we weren't sure we had enough to make it to San Carlos.
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| Shaky siphon |
When the tank gauge approached one-eighth, it was time to transfer our extra diesel from jugs to tank. Refueling in rough seas was interesting. We turned Cilantro's nose off the wind to starboard so that the swells and waves were quartering us and the diesel deckfill would be on the leeward side. Sue was at the helm, controlling Cilantro's movement as best she could and alerting Curtis to especially big swells. Curtis carefully emptied our two six-gallon jugs using the self-priming shaky siphon (aka "Texas gas station") we purchased in Maine last summer. It's a wonderfully simple contraption, made out of clear plastic tubing and a metal nozzle with a small ball held loosely inside it. When you dip the metal nozzle end in the fuel and jiggle it, fuel begins to move up through the tube; the ball acts as a check valve to keep it from running back down. As the tube fills with fuel, the siphon takes over and finishes the job. The constant yawing and wallowing of the boat made refueling a painstaking process, but Curtis -- the Master of Tidiness, Sue decided -- finished with only a small rag's worth of fuel to mop up.
The rest of this long day passed unremarkably, with more black storm petrels scooting and veering among the wave troughs and immature brown boobies keeping us company overhead, gliding just off our boom and mizzen mast. Toward evening, nearing the lovely Las Cocinas anchorage once again, we were slightly more confident about our leak situation but slightly less so about our fuel management. Weary and a bit salt-encrusted, we opted to set the hook for the night and regroup. A fortuitous decision, as it turns out. Day's travel: 76 nm, 13 hrs, 28 min.
The rest of this long day passed unremarkably, with more black storm petrels scooting and veering among the wave troughs and immature brown boobies keeping us company overhead, gliding just off our boom and mizzen mast. Toward evening, nearing the lovely Las Cocinas anchorage once again, we were slightly more confident about our leak situation but slightly less so about our fuel management. Weary and a bit salt-encrusted, we opted to set the hook for the night and regroup. A fortuitous decision, as it turns out. Day's travel: 76 nm, 13 hrs, 28 min.
