[This email forwarded from sailmail status report.]

Georgetown Passage - Day 1, 12-28-08

We left you as we were arriving in Nassau, awaiting clearance into the
Bahamas. We
spent about a week there, relaxing and doing boat chores. Just like
the saying
goes, cruising is boat repair in exotic locations!

One of our repairs was the annoying leak we'd had in the engine room,
threatening
our new inverter-charger. Past owners had piled some sort of goop -
probably the
ubiquitous 3M 101 caulk, a very good bedding material, as it remains
flexible and
can be removed later, if desired, without resorting to extreme
measures such as
required with their 5200 caulk, nearly universally used by cruisers
for underwater
bedding - on the pipe leading down from the cockpit scupper.

That yielded to aggressive application of a utility knife, and we
peeled it all off.
It was immediately apparent that there was a ready explanation for
the leaking we'd
had. There was a nylon nut which was not fully seated against the
fiberglass molded
"bathtub" topsides, which caught the water behind a grate, leading it
to a thru-hull
in the bottom.

I put my packing gland wrench - a specialty tool like a crescent
wrench in concept,
but with very long jaws, relatively thin for tight spaces, and which
could open to
nearly 4" - on the nut and commenced trying to back it out in order to
get into the
area under it for recaulking.

However, Lydia, topsides, noticed that the fitting up there moved a
bit, and as I
got further down with the nut, it moved around in the "bathtub" as
well as turned a
bit. Hmmm…. I knew it was a thru-hull… Perhaps the nut could be
lowered enough
that we could get under not only the thru-hull as well as under the
nut, to clean
out the old caulking, to enhance the application of new. Since the
top portion was
turning slightly, I had Lydia hold the grate we lifted in such a
position that it
hit the corners of the "bathtub" so it wouldn't turn, and backed the
nut down tight
on the Ell it was above. That gave us a little working room, so we
took folded
sandpaper to the spaces, but it was extremely tight fitting, and
didn't look
promising.

Thinking some more on it, I realized that if the top was turning, it
had to be
relatively free in the space it was put. I'd assumed it was just
caulked into an
Ell of the PVC piping used to channel the cockpit drains to the sea
via the two 2"
thru-hulls in the bilge. Perhaps if I could figure out a way to turn
it enough, it
would surrender its bond with the prior caulking and I could remove
it, and start
over.

After much figurative headscratching, I found a piece of ¼" stainless
steel I had
left over from a project which fit into the slot in the thru-hull
(think monster
screwdriver in a straight-slot monster screw with a hole in the
middle). However,
it was pretty short, and getting something on it to make it turn would
be
challenging. Eventually I came up with a monster crescent wrench,
which went over
the ¼" stainless, and used another monster pipe wrench to turn it.

Sure enough, it could be backed out, albeit very slowly and
challengingly, as I had
to hold the crescent wrench in position on the stainless with my
fingers of one
hand, and try to make the pipe wrench stay put on the crescent while I
also tried to
make the stainless stay in the slot. And, of course, eventually the
nut below hit
the bottom side again, so back into the Engine Room (my "cave" as one
of our friends
called it) for more backing off. Eventually, I had Lydia stay there
to hold it
while I turned the thru-hull out. It turned out that the Ell below
was threaded,
and the thru-hull had been threaded into it, with the application,
perhaps, of 101,
or maybe just plumbers "goop" which had somewhat solidified and made
turning the
thru-hull very difficult, initially.

Our leak had been caused by, not inadequate caulk (though that
certainly was the
case), but, instead, a poorly centered hole through which the thru-
hull passed. The
lip of the thru-hull hit the sloped of the "bathtub" and was never
flat on the
bottom. So, grabbing the chisel and hammer, I took enough material
off to allow the
lip to lie flat. A thorough cleaning of both the ell's threads and
the thru-hull
threads, as well as the lip, assured a good mate for our rebedding.

The Ell, meanwhile, of course, was a tapered pipe thread, while the
thru-hull, as is
the case on all of them, was straight. That would mean it would seat
poorly, and
the thread eventually would stop turning, as it jammed against the
reducing diameter
of the threads, but the threads would not be mated. However, with
only running
water as the pressure, we were confident that we could adequately seal
it against
water coming down the scupper.

Rebedding was pretty straightforward. We liberally applied plumber's
goop to the
Ell's threads, which would provide an adequate seal there, and put a -
let's just
say - liberal amount of 101 on the nut and the lip of the thru-hull.
So much so
that, in the process of getting the nut on it, and into the Ell, 101
got on the
threads a bit, but turning the nut up stripped most of that off. Just
as in bedding
our stanchion base, we threaded the fitting very tight (the same
process as getting
it out, in reverse, with lots of manipulation of the stainless steel
piece, crescent
wrench and pipe wrench) into the Ell, but made the nut and the lip
only snug, and
settled in to wait for it to set up a bit. A couple of days later,
when the big
overflow was no longer tacky, I had Lydia hold the top secure with the
grate, and
turned the nut below as far as it would go without stripping the
edges. A
satisfying amount squished out in both areas, and we have had not the
first seep let
alone any leakage. While it's a real PITA, we're now confident that
if we should
have to repeat the process on any of the other 3 (similarly glopped up
below in the
engine room), we will succeed at it. Phew!

Many other 1-2-3s remain on our list, but none are mission-critical,
so we wait for
an enforced delay in our travels to address them.

Back to the passage, we had our dinghy secured and we were ready to go
to the fuel
dock. During our walkings-around, chiefly to obtain our Bahamas cell
phone, we'd
checked with the couple of fuel suppliers and the diesel delivery had
apparently
happened, as it was pretty widely available. We'd originally thought
we'd go to
their dock at closing, and leave from there at first light. The
dockmaster assured
us that we'd be able to do that, but with the relatively heavy winds,
and the
limited time we'd have available, we elected to do that in the
morning, instead.

Earlier, I'd tried to find our weather forecaster to get a picture of
what we'd be
facing on our passage, but got nothing. I'd guessed that he must have
gone on
vacation, but, as we had a nice internet connection during our entire
time at
anchor, I'd been pulling regular wind gribs (a file which shows the
direction of the
winds on a map/chart) which showed heavy winds for the period we
remained anchored,
but that they'd moderate by the 28th. On the morning of the 28th, I
tried again to
find our forecaster, and, failing, put out an "any station" call to
see if anyone
else had heard him.

Several responded saying they'd had no luck, either, but then one of
the respondents
called back saying that he'd just gotten an email from a friend. That
showed that
Chris was, indeed, away, and his replacement was using a different
time schedule.
He was on at the time, with others, and I succeeded in contacting
him. His forecast
confirmed our gribs, and we made ready to go the following morning.
Early on the
morning of the 29th, his forecasts again confirmed the conclusions I'd
reached, and
we prepared to get under way.

Accordingly, we had our anchor up at 8:49, and stood off the fuel dock
while,
coincidentally, the boat which had informed us of the different
weather forecast
broadcast schedule, completed their fuel and watering. We fueled,
learning that our
constant motoring had yielded a consumption of about 1.3 gallons per
hour of use
during the time of our last fueling in Charleston, which included our
trip to, and
passage over, from Miami. We'd been very conservative with our water,
and therefore
took little enough that we weren't charged for that portion.
Ironically, diesel
fuel his cheaper here than in the states, about the same as at the
pump shoreside,
but probably a dollar or more less than in marinas, for which we were
grateful.
Apparently the tax structure is much less here, as they certainly have
to pay more
for their delivered fuel than the US based ones we'd fueled at on our
way south.

We were off the dock and under way by 9:45. The passage east out of
Nassau is very
tricky, with lots of rocks and coral and shoals, so we motored our way
as we picked
our path through them. By noon we were under sail in a stiff due-east
breeze.
Knowing that we'd be on a close reach or even beating, I started with
a reef in the
main, and then reefed the genoa to about 100% (the clew lined up with
the mast)
instead of its full 135%. Just for security, as we passed the coral
heads and rocks
about halfway there, we turned on the engine as we negotiated our way
through them.
They were easily seen and avoided. Because we were beating so hard,
our speed was
relatively slow, and we elected to motorsail the last couple of hours
into Allen's
Cay in order to have the anchor down in daylight. It was a tricky
entrance in any
event, so we'd need the engine then, anyway. Sure enough, we had the
anchors
(strong current there dictates two anchors) down in a protected
anchorage between
the three islands there.

As this has been long enough, we'll tell you of our adventures ashore
and underwater
in a later posting. As always, those on our log lists will receive
real-time
reports, but those seeing these in the forums will have to wait until
we have good
internet connectivity. There's no internet service here, and we don't
know when the
next will be, but you can see our progress on our SPOT page,
http://tinyurl.com/FlyingPigSpotTracking …

Stay tuned :{))

L8R

Skip and Crew

Morgan 461 #2
SV Flying Pig KI4MPC
See our galleries at www.justpickone.org/skip/gallery !
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"And then again, when you sit at the helm of your little ship on a
clear
night, and gaze at the countless stars overhead, and realize that you
are
quite alone on a wide, wide sea, it is apt to occur to you that in the
general scheme of things you are merely an insignificant speck on the
surface of the ocean; and are not nearly so important or as self-
sufficient
as you thought you were. Which is an exceedingly wholesome thought,
and one
that may effect a permanent change in your deportment that will be
greatly
appreciated by your friends."- James S. Pitkin