So what do I call this, day 21 and 22?

I am back on the boat in Brunswick Georgia after being home with family for the last month.  It was nice to be home, but let’s face it, the weather is better here. When we left home on Saturday morning, it was getting ready to do the dreaded “wintery mix.”  We boogied out of town at 4:30 a.m. to be south of the winter belt that was headed our way by 6:30 or 7:00.  As we were just south of Washington D.C., you could hear some sleet pellets hitting the windshield and see a little snow on the windshield as well.  That lasted all of about 20 minutes and we were out of it.  The temps hovered around 35 degrees for a while, but the further south we went the temps started to rise.  By the time we got to Brunswick it was in the mid 70’s.  Yes!!

The next day, Sunday, was spent cleaning the boat. After a month sitting in a marina with birds doing their “thing” it really needed scrubbing.  We also went to the grocery store and provisioned the boat, and procured some small maintenance items for the boat as well.  All in all it was a nice day, working a little in the sunshine and fresh air, and running a few errands as well.

Being back on the boat full time you start to listen to sounds, making sure there is nothing new happening.  One thing we began to notice was the fresh water pump cycling every so often.  Not a lot, but more than it should.  We checked a few things, nothing seemed amiss, so just kept it in mind to monitor the activity.

Monday was Jan’s birthday, and our anniversary, 29 years.  The day started out great, had breakfast and relaxed a little bit.  All the while, the pump kept cycling a little more frequently.  Time to get serious and check this out.  We looked at every water connection on the boat and found nothing, nada.  But, while I was looking at the sink connections on the aft deck sink, I noticed some water on the floor of the storage compartment under the sink, even though all the sink connections were dry.  Inside that compartment is also a water filter assembly for the ice maker.  I felt the canister and it was wet and I could see a few drops here and there.  Since we no longer use the ice maker and this filter assembly is obsolete and probably doesn’t work anyway, we decided to take it out and create a bypass loop connecting the two sides together, thereby eliminating the filter all together.  After a trip to Lowes to get some flex tube and connectors, we cobbled together something that would work.  We put it all in place and turned on the water pump.  It pressurized and turned off just like it should.  Then within a few minutes it started to cycle again, and again, and again, then it just stayed on.  Obviously our fix was not THE fix.  As it turned out, the hot water heater took a crap.  Just like what can happen in a home, the hot water heater started to leak so the system couldn’t maintain pressure.  We planned to leave the next morning so what do we do.  It was 9:00 at night, an online check showed no one locally had the size heater I wanted, but it was available on line.  So there would not be a replacement today.  In the meantime we had to bypass the water heater which would leave us with only cold water. Well we could probably live with that for a little while.  So, I drained the water heater and put on the bypass that I use to winterize the water system so no antifreeze gets into the hot water heater, but the bypass connector was just not up to the task of taking all the pressure, and leaked profusely.  We needed to fashion a gasket to seal the two threaded couplings.  Remember, it was now 10:00 p.m. and we had no running water on the boat at this point, and we were leaving in the morning.  Rousby and I noodled on it for a while, then Rousby remembered what an old friend had done to repair a water pump on a boat.  He used a paper bag to create a gasket.  It worked great, and they got the boat home just fine.  So we took an old tissue box and cut circles the size of the fitting, and put three in each fitting, tightened it down, and voila, no more leaks.  The pump hasn’t cycled on its own since.  Of course we have no hot water either.  So what are we going to do?  I’ll explain everything in tomorrow’s blog.

Until tomorrow…