Hi, all. I'm back from the trip. I'll post a synopsis in another thread.

Lionheart's engine got FLOODED with seawater when we had her heeled to
port, hard, between West Palm Beach and Daytona Beach in 8' seas and
fantastic 25-30 knot winds!

I have an announcement to make.....

Lionheart had a dripless packing installed this past winter by her owner
who didn't want to fool around greasing her perfectly-great-working greased
packing gland. It was installed by a local boatyard with 40 years in the
business. Why they hooked up the water injection hoses not required to the
engine's waterlines is a mystery to me. It's not required under 12 knots
in sailboats. But they did......

A fitting for this purpose was installed with 1/2" hose directly from the
water line coming out of the Perkins 4-108 to the fitting on the dripless.
Mistake NUMBER ONE. Our heeling hard to port exposed what has been going
on since its installation.

Water BACKS UP through this hose into the water lines coming out of the
engine to the waterline's anti-siphon break in the exhaust system, filling
the lines, exhaust waterbox muffler, and the lower-than-the-waterline
engine's exhaust system, backing up into the exhaust loop until it
eventually, slowly levels itself with the seawater level outside the boat.
The whole thing is OVERFLOWING with seawater. If we took the exhaust hose
off the waterbox muffler, water trickled out, continuously, into the bilge.

The Perkins suffered massive flooding of 3 of her 4 cylinders somewhere
between West Palm Beach and the treacherous Ponce De Leon Inlet at
Titusville. It was completely hydrolocked. We called Towboat/US who
dispatched a 200hp Johnson outboard towboat, immediately. But, alas, the
ripping current coming OUT of Ponce coupled with the waves of this East
wind at 25-30 made it impossible to tow us. We had to sail into the inlet
on our own. Mindwracking is a good term...but we made it.

Towed to Daytona Marina and Boatyard, who recommended Cutter Doc owned by
J.R., we waited at their quay and he showed up quickly to pickle the
Perkins with his mysterious mixture of Marvel Mystery Oil and other mineral
oils and water absorbers. Have you seen pictures of the Exxon Valdez oil
spill? That's what we pumped out of the Perkins crankcase....sea water and
tar balls. Blackened diesel oil, by the way, never looks "milky" with
water in it. It looks NORMAL.

After pickling and pumping and pickling and pumping he got the crap out of
the engine and did a "few" oil changes. The pickling mixture was left in
the engine for several days to work off the crud. A final engine oil
change and 2 new injectors, cleaning out 2 other injectors and replacing
one cracked injector hold down that broke during the starting process and
she run like a clock. If you're thinking about replacing your Perkins with
some Jap engine....think about what was done to this one and it SURVIVED
UNSCATHED. It now runs as new, again....no bent rods, broken cranks, etc.

JR's initial idea was that we topped the loop, which in Lionheart goes WAY
above the waterline. I was skeptical. The exhaust comes out underwater
just sitting level and we put this outlet straight down with the loop
tilted 30-35 degrees heeled over....but that wasn't it.

After the mechanic left, I kept watching that damned water trickle for days
out of the muffler box with the exhaust hose removed. Drove me crazy!
Where's it coming from? I took the hose off the seacock and that valve was
sealing perfectly. Then I got to thinking about "recent modifications",
the new bearing. I took a visegrip and pinched off that hose to the
bearing and the trickling stopped......no more water running into the
submerged engine. I told the mechanic what I'd found and we agreed that
was "it", cancelling the expensive haulout, new holes in the hull for
exhaust outlet and leaving the underwater hole capped to flood the hull
later....yecch. I probably saved my captain $2K? He sure was a happy
camper when I told him about it back in Atlanta....(c;

WARNING - If you have a dripless bearing that has a water injection hose
that is only needed to blow the bubble out of the bearing when you've had
the boat out of the water....PUT A SHUTOFF VALVE IN THE HOSE TO STOP
FLOODING THE EXHAUST IN BETWEEN HAULOUTS!!

Just thought you'd all like to know....(c;

Larry....back online and the Pickled Perkins 4-108 runs like a clock on her
new injectors! Thank you to the Perkins engineers who overdesigned her.