Wet toilet paper

So what happened to your Dynamic Duo and the flooding boat! Jumping catfish, they were in a pickle.

I rushed below and inspected all the seacocks. We have a lot of through hull fittings, four in each heads, two under the sink in the main cabin and two supplying the engine. In addition there are various other fittings for the bilge pumps, engine exhaust, speed transducer, heater, scupper drains, vents for the various fuel, water and waste tanks.

As we had been sailing well heeled, any of these could have been under water, however the most inportant are the permanently submerged ones.

I went round them all and switched them off, opened up the engine compartment to see if there were any leaks there and drained the bilge with the electric bilge pump.

Up came all the floor boards to inspect the keel bolts. At this stage I had not identified the source but it was clearly quite a substantial leak as the ingress had been significant.

Well heeled.

Having done all this there did not seem to be any more coming in. However the combination of this issue and the unidentified hum from the transmission meant that carrying on to a remote anchorage was not a terrific plan and I thought we needed to return to civilisation.

I radioed Livianda and told them that we were returning to Datca because of these problems. This was a return trip of about 16 NM but the wind would be behind us and with a bit of luck we could sail the whole way before dark, without the need to motor.

So that is what we did. It was a good sail with a following wind of 15-20kts. As we reached the point of Ince Burundari, the wind failed and we had to motor rounf for just a few minutes before the breeze returned, but this time from the N directly ahead of us. We only had about 4 miles to go so we carried on sailing up wind, but as we closed our destination the wind strength increased and we ended up forereaching into 25-30 knot winds for a couple of miles to get to Datca. We managed to sail into the harbour before turning on the motor.

As useful as....

There was no berth obviously available so we anchored in the bay. 

The only clue I had was that the toilet paper repository under the sink in the aft heads was wet when I pulled it out to look at the seacocks there. It could just have got wet from the water in the bilge slopping in there but I was suspicious this could be our source of trouble.

Sinking by the sink

So with the seacock draining the sink closed, I filled the sink with fresh water. Lo and behold it poured out the underside of the sink. We had been sailng well heeled to port and seawater would have entered up the piping and leaked out. I felt much better that the source of the potential calamity had been found, and we settled down to have a beer and a relaxed evening.

However I was still concerned about the lubrication of my sterngland, so to speak, and spent a restless night going through the various strategies available.

I sent a message to the Beneteau 423 forum. This is a brilliant group who are highly responsive, highly knowledgable and always kee to help. Witihn a few hours I had several replies offering a range of views.

The problem I faced was that the rubber hose on the stern gland lube system was ancient, hard and possibl;y fragile. If I put a mole grip on it to block the water flow, it might crack.

Sterngland lubrication setup

I could turn off the inflow at the seacock, but the outflow is through a brass tube, fibreleglassed into the stern tube apparatus. This is notoriously fragile and I know of several people who have snapped them off trying to work on them. So I did not really want to go there.

The reples I got varied from “dont touch that lot while afloat, you could sink”, to”don’t worry about it when I snapped mine off I just dived over the side and blocked the inflow round the prop shaft with plasticine and an anode”!

Someone else on the forum said they had also had this humming noise intermittently but had never found the cause, and had not noticed a hot prop shaft.

So I tossed and turned a bit wrestling with this dilemma.

In the morning we tied up in the harbour.

I put my big girl pants on and set to work. I got the area cleared for action and recruited my assistant. I had new hose if I needed it but the plan was to remove the hose from the inflw side and put a bung in it to stop the backflow.

Fortunately the 20 year old hose came off the junction more easily than I had expected. There was good brisk back flow from the hose, and on opening the tap, good brisk inflow. So the original hypothesis of a blocked inflow was wrong. What a relief, we did not urgently need a diver.

There is an instruction in the handbook that after the boat is relauched after a period ashore the sterngland should be lubricated with a small amount of magic grease and burped. Because we had not dried out this winter I had not done this, but perhaps?

The magic grease trick involves putting a small amount inside a plastic straw, flattening the end of the straw, slipping it inside the rubber stern gland and milking the grease inside.

Magic grease delivery apparatus

The burping procedure involves putting your hands around the gland and squeezing hard (think least favourite boss or manager) until it deforms and a ”burp” of water spills out.

I then re-sealed the drainage of the sink with Butyl goo – great stuff. So with a bit of luck we were a going concern again.

Livianda had retraced their track back to Datca and re-joined us. The next morning we set off E again. It was quite a brisk breeze but we motored for a bit to test out the transmission. Cool as a cucumber, Well a black rubber one. Amazing what a little bit of lube can do. The possibilities for puerile humour are immense but I will resist in the cause of decency.

Dottin about.

Over the next few days we dotted about favourite haunts, Dirsek, Orhaniye, and ended up at Bencik, one of thr nicest anchorages. The water is still cold but we finally mustered up the moral courage to get in the water with the scrapers to havea go at the hull.

Sea life

It then became clear why we had been going so slowly. There was a thick layer of sea life from stem to stern. Tubeworm, barnacles and fronds of weed everywhere. After half and hour we had perhaps cleared about quarter of it but without a wet suit it was not possible to do much more.

We also found that there was no anode whatsoever on the prop shaft.

Absent anode on prop shaft.

The anode is made of zinc and corrodes sacrificially to protect the sterngear. Without one there is a risk the prop might de-zincify, which is a form of corrosiion that results in it turning mostly into copper and becoming fragile. I had one on board but theere is no way one can be fitted without an aqualung.

So we still need a diver!