After the rough passage from The Abacos to Eleuthera all three boats in our little flotilla were bruised and battered. On Sanitas, the propane sensor was alarming and cutting off propane to the stove. This first occurred after the ingredients for dinner were chopped but before they were actually cooked. Doh! And more importantly, the bilge pump failed. Yes, that bilge pump. The one that drove Mike to stay up late every night in Marathon to ensure it was installed and working before we left Florida.

After pumping a 5-gallon bucket of dirty water out of the bilge by hand using a tiny portable pump (and dousing me with bilge water in the process) Mike started trouble shooting.

• Sea grass clogging the input strainer? Nope.
• Intake hoses clogged? Nope.
• Output hoses clogged? Nope.
• Thumb over the pump intake. Any suction? No suction.

So we took the whole darn thing apart. I have a lot of photos from boat projects so far of Mike lying on the floor in this same place and in a similar measure of contortion.

I am so impressed that Mike was able to find the source of the problem and to fix it! The diaphragm that performs the physical pumping is supposed to be held in place by a small metal cap. That cap had failed. Essentially this cap had bent in such a way that it no longer did its job of holding the diaphragm in place. But it was miraculously still sitting next to the diaphragm, instead of being lost somewhere in the dark corners of the bilge.

We jury-rigged a solution that should work until we can replace this specialized part. Mike re-flared the pin that holds the cap in place, using a #2 phillips head screwdriver bit. He pounded down on the head on the pin using a hammer onto the screwdriver bit until it was shaped more or less correctly and resumed its job of holding the diaphragm in place.

So far, so good! Of course while executing this project, we discovered that our back-up manual bilge pump doesn’t work. But rebuilding that pump will be another whole project for a later date.

In the latest episode of the quest to PLUG ALL THE LEAKS …. we had a carpenter / captain take a look at Sanitas in White Sound at Green Turtle Cay. He pointed out some small cracks in the teak toe rail on the bow, and suggested that they could be the source of the water intrusion into our forward cabin. You remember that “water intrusion”, aka leak, right? I now admit that we’ve been fighting this leak since the boat yard. So far we’ve:

• Re-set the deck fitting for the head pump-out
• Re-set the deck fitting for the foreword water tank input
• Replaced the mattress and bought three different mattress pads
• Side-tripped to Miami and re-glassed the anchor locker

Now we are trying again to get to the root cause and fix this dang leak once and for all by repairing the connection between the wooden toe rail and the fiberglass deck.

We grabbed a slip at the Conch Inn Marina in Marsh Harbour so that we’d have a safe and secure place to work, protected by wind and waves. Then I made the trip the Island Boy’s Tackle and bought them out of Life Calk tubes.

The material supposedly stays slightly flexible when dry, so it should work for the necessary flexing of the bow when we sail into waves. But it should also be well waterproof, and fill any existing cracks in the decking. Mike spent one entire day standing in the dinghy, tied to Sanitas, scraping old adhesive from beneath the toe rail, all the way from the bow to the beam. He did find several spots where the old adhesive was black and rotten – a good sign that this could be the culprit in our leaks. The black spots did roughly correspond with the places we see water trickle down the walls of the cabin too. Another good sign!

The second day, Mike spent back in that dinghy (core and balance workout?) filling the seam with a new bead of Life Caulk. We let her dry for 48 hours in the sun, and hoped for the best.

I really hope this does the trick. It would be great to be able to leave the mattress in the cabin while we sail. Lately, we’ve been folding the mattress in half, pulling out all of the pillow and blankets, stuffing chamois into the “ceiling” when the water comes in, and laying beach towels along the hull. Oh, and the headliner has been sitting in the salon on the floor leaning against the settee, so that it does not continue to get wet. It will be great to get back to normal, and clear up some of the chaos on Little Sanitas!

Here’s Mike putting the headliner back in place …