Flash Flood.

It rained. 

Thank GOD the folks at Juniper Beach told me to turn my bow toward the creek and not the river (they had told me the opposite earlier, but  I am still very grateful).  I don't know if my dock lines could have held if all that rushing water had been pressing against a flat stern.

Can you imagine all this water pushing on the transom of the boat? 

 

 

Lesson #1: Leave your boat facing upstream when tied up on a creek.

 

You wouldn't believe how this little O'Day was writhing and rolling against the current.  She made it through the flash flood okay, but ended up coming down on top of the vertical 4x4s on the dock.  No damage, from what I can tell.

 

 

Can you imagine how this would have gone if I hadn't fixed that hose in the drain?!

Lesson #2: Always fix what you can as soon as you can

Since then, the water level has just kept going up.  I believe it's almost to 18 feet now.  My boat is safe at a floating dock, but more on that later!

 

Cheers!



 



WHY IS MY BOAT FULL OF WATER?!!

First of all: My boat is fine now.  Let's just get that part out of the way. 


After my buddy came up from South Carolina, I got really busy and I wasn't on the boat for a couple of weeks.  A couple of very rainy weeks.  Which is whatever.  The cockpit drains out the back of the boat so no worries there.  And the river didn't rise enough for me to have to adjust the dock lines so I'm good there too.

Yet, when I came back to my boat and opened the cover to the companionway, I was greeted with the sound of sloshing, and I saw waves on the floor... On the floor?  Yep, my cabin was full of water.  Well, not full.  But it was about 3" of water towards the companionway.

Why? I wondered.  Maybe the companionway wasn't closed enough?  Maybe the keel bolt was leaking?  It was probably just the rain, I decided.  Or it probably would have more water in it.

Well, I set my pump to work.  Came back shortly, and it was still pumping.  Wow, I thought, the bilge must be bigger than I thought!  So the next time I left it pumping all night.  When I checked on it the next morning,  it was still pumping.

Not only was it still pumping, but the water level was exactly the same. That's when I figured out what the problem must be: the cockpit drain. 

You see, the bilge is set up to pump into the cockpit, which drains outside of the boat.  But if something were wrong with that drain, it would leak right back inside and you'd end up endlessly pumping the same water in a vicious cycle.  The water level would stay the same.

I did some research (because the instructions for the Mac 25 are so bare bones, they are not very helpful) and found out that the drain leads to a hose...then that hose leads to a through-hole in the transom.  Surely, I reasoned, the hose must have come loose.  That must be it.

Thus, I began the exhausting process of removing the foam, wallowing around in bilgewater, opening up access to the transom under the seats, squeezing in said area (no easy task...I'm not a small man), and then inspecting the hose.

Long story short: I was right.  Boy was it a task to replace the thing.  I had a little help from a fellow sailor with getting the thing reattached, but the honor of wallowing around in the bilgewater (also full of anchor chain rust) and crawling into the dark to contort into a proper shape for actually working in there was mine.

But I got it done!  And I feel pretty good about diagnosing my first big boat issue- and about fixing it (mostly) on my own.  After all, what sailor is worth his salt if he can't take care of his boat?

Hopefully it will be smooth sailing for at least another good spell.

Cheers!

PS: Wish I had taken some pictures.  I might try and find some or stage some similar ones, idk.