Monday 20 Dec, Anchored Lake Worth FL, cruising day 23: First swim of the season. Fixed cockpit windscreen leaks, but found a new leak in the emersion heater!
They say, it never rains, then it pours. Well, that’s how I feel right now about this leaky cauldron we are sailing in. It seems we have a new leak every damned day! I guess we should just feel lucky it’s only the season for leaks from above and within, not from below. Yet.
Today we want to fix the windscreen opening which has been dripping for a while but recently got worst. Trouble is, like most boat projects, it’s not as simple as just sticking on a new sealing strip. You see, the window has to be removed first. And to remove the window we need to remove the supporting arms and to remove those, we need to un-do bolts. But they cannot be budged. Same-old-story, stainless screws into aluminium. All totally welded into place by corrosion ☹
Luckily, having anticipated I would need to get aggressive with this, I have a new pair of supporting arms on hand, purchased from our good friends in HR-Parts. First, I try the gentle approach. Soaking the screw heads with Corrosion-X for several hours. Then I try with my impact driver. This does succeed for the bolts through the glass, but for those into the frame it just breaks the heads off. And one other will not even do that. So that gets drilled out. All in all, the supporting arms get ruined, as I thought they would.
With the window out and placed on the aft deck, I get to work installing new rubbers. I don’t quite have the correct width in my supplies, so it takes a while to cut down what I do have. I also add some spots of silicon here and there where there are joints in the frame.
While all this is drying, I head off to the CBP office to get our outbound clearance, and to retrieve our registration document they had withheld. We will not depart until Wednesday, but tomorrow will be a rather wet and rough ride to CBP, so got it done today in the calm weather. For once, our session with CBP goes smoothly. No pertinent questions and no being told off like naughty children. And I’m on my way again within just 15 minutes.
Before heading back to Cloudy Bay, I head further north looking for a place to moor the dinghy so we can go food shopping. But like a lot of Florida, there is simply no place to put your dinghy without taking risk or being seriously cheeky. Most marinas don’t allow you to moor, and all other waterfront is private property. So shopping gets deferred until we get to Fort Lauderdale.
On the way back, I decide to go via the east side of Peanut Island for a change. And while heading over to the east shoreline, I spot what looks like a woman in a bikini, with her dog, about 100m from the shore apparently walking on water. Then in the next moment, as the outboard hits the bottom and I’m nearly catapulted over the bow, I realise the water here is extremely shallow. Note to self: don’t get distracted by a dog walking on water… or a bikini!
Back at Cloudy Bay we set to reinstalling the windscreen window. All reasonably straight forward with a few minor modifications to the new arms. It does seem that nothing, even new items designed as exact replacements, ever fits correctly quite as they should do. Pffff. Boats!
At the success of the windscreen, I take my first dip in the sea. The water is 26 degC and very refreshing. Not quite as clear as it looks from the deck, but not bad for a lake. Really cannot wait to be in the clear blue water of the Florida Keys.
In the evening it’s time to tackle the 230v hot water emersion heater. It had been working OK in the yard, but once we tried to power it with the generator, it kept flipping breakers. The emersion is not easy to get to, but I’m very familiar with where it is. Right under the hotwater tank where I recently replumbed… 3 times! As I remove the cover plate, water pours out. Uh-ho, that’s not good. Water and 230v are never friends. With the cover off, I manage to remove the thermostat controller and find it completely wet and rusting. Sure enough, we have a very small leak coming from where the emersion coil enters the tank. The only way to fix this is to replace the emersion. And that means that I have to remove the tank. Having already removed and replaced it 3 times in the last few months, I utterly refuse to remove it again until we are back in the yard. We will just have to make hot water with the engine only.
Then I have an idea. Maybe the emersion heating coil itself is OK? Yes, there is the odd drip coming from around it. But where the power connects (usually via the thermostat) it is dry. I check electrical insulation on the electrical heating coil and it’s good. So you know what I did? I just connected the power directly to the heating coil without any thermostat in place. And with the generator running, I confirm that it is indeed heating the water! (or at least drawing the expected current). So going forward, this is how we will heat the water. Manually, with me acting as thermostat! We will only heat for 45 minute maximum, so as not to risk overheating.
All in all a pretty satisfactory day. Windscreen fixed, and while annoyed by the water heater, at least we have a workaround to use it this cruising season.
Tomorrow the “storm” will come. Wind and rain. That should put our leaky cauldron to the test again! There had better not be any new ones!
