Into Every Life A Little Rain Must Fall

     Just in case those of you that follow our blog were thinking living aboard and travelling was all warm and fuzzy; let me enlighten you with our most recent calamities.  We brought Southern Style to Atlantic Yacht Basin (AYB), in Chesapeake, VA on May 8th.  The trip to the boatyard was a planned stop for us to soda blast the bottom, get new bottom paint and fix a few odds and ends.  We called AYB in January to set up the repairs and they assured us there would be no problems meeting our timeline.  Our timeline was to have all the repairs completed no later than May 31st so we could leave on June 1st to head to NYC to meet up friends for our trip to Maine.  They assured us that 3 weeks was plenty of time to do everything and our timetable was no problem.

We finally left Atlantic Yacht Basin last Tuesday June 11th after an almost 2 week delay.  We told them that it was more important to "get it right" than to rush the bottom paint and other jobs, so they worked to make all the repairs "top notch".   So on June 11th we made a short, 3 hour cruise to Hampton, VA.  This put us in position to pop out the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay and into the Atlantic Ocean.  We hoped to run from the Bay all the way up to Atlantic City, NJ on Wednesday June 12th.  The weather off shore has not been good with winds and fairly big seas; and Wednesday was predicted to be about the best day for the foreseeable future.  The forecast was for 3-foot waves and east winds at 15kts.  A forecast that is very manageable for a boat our size.
   
So Wednesday morning at the crack of dawn, Southern Style and multiple other boats with the same idea, all flooded out of the inlet heading north.  The waves were originally as projected at about 3 feet and we were doing fine making our way with another boat that decided to ride behind us so we could break the waves a bit for him.  It was about two hours after leaving that things began going sideways.

First we started getting a faulty oil pressure sensor alert and then a low oil pressure message on our port engine.  Keith was almost certain it was just a bad sensor or short in a wire, but we had a slight concern that it could be truly low oil pressure to the engine.  After just a few minutes, the oil reading went from 55 psi to 0 psi and the computer automatically de-rated the engine for it to stop since it thought it had no oil pressure.  With only one engine, the stabilizers went out.  The stabilizers only work if both engine are in gear and the boat is traveling forward at more than 4 mph.

Now without the stabilizers working, the waves really began to toss us around pretty badly.  Additionally, the waves began to increase from 3 feet to 6 to 8 feet.  We told the other boat behind us about our trouble and he decided to keep pressing on north.  Keith had an old, leaky oil sensor he kept on the boat from a previous repair.  He thought it was worth a shot to try and repair and decided to put that one on the port engine to see how it would do.  It took a solid 45  minutes of work in the hot engine room with me trying to pilot the pitching boat on one engine for Keith to get the sensor replaced.  Just as he was finishing the job, the starboard engine stopped.  Now we were dead in the water with no control of the boat, and the waves just pitched us sideways.  It was only a matter of minutes until Keith figured out he had just gotten against a lever that caused the starboard engine to stop and it was fixed quickly, but in that time (and during the preceding 30-40 minutes) drawers had come open and the floor was covered with anything not permanently attached to the boat.  It looked like a disaster.  At least we had both engines back up and running now.  But those few minutes without propulsion had wreaked havoc on the boat and its occupants.
   
Our good fortune only lasted about 2 minutes until the sound of the high water alarm went off.  This is the absolute worst sound any boater can hear.  It means you have a lot of water inside your boat somewhere.  Since Keith was just from the engine room, he knew the high water was not coming from there.  He needed to go down the companion way to see if he could find the water source .  As Keith ran down to look, he found sea water running down the hall from the forward stateroom.  There was high water in the forward bilge and the bilge pump was trying to pump out the water.  What the heck!!!! 

One on the forward hatches had come open in the rough seas and was allowing water that was coming across the bow of the boat to run right down into the cabin.  He got the hatch closed and came back upstairs.  At this point he is understandably feeling terrible from doing all this in rolling seas and I am about to have a heart attack.  We talked about whether to try to forge ahead to Ocean City, MD and bail out at that inlet or turn around.  We were 70 miles from Ocean City and 40 miles back to Hampton, VA.  We voted to turn around.  It was closer to get back to Hampton and maybe the ride would be better if we put the waves to our stern than to keep plowing into a head sea.  The decision was the right one as it did help to make things a little better once we got turned around.  The following seas were much more stable and allowed us to catch our breath.

 The oil sensor Keith replaced was still bouncing all over with its readings.  After about 2 hours running back towards Hampton, the oil sensor reading went to 0 psi again.  CRAP!  We had no choice but to shut down the port engine as we did not need to burn up an $80k engine.  So we limped home the last 25 miles on one engine and without stabilizers again.

After leaving at Hampton at 5:45 AM and making a round trip of about 120 miles, we arrived back in Hampton around 2 PM to lick our wounds and regroup.  Keith had called Caterpillar while we were running back to Hampton.  We were fortunate that he was able to get a technician to come first thing Thursday morning and put a new oil sensor on the port engine.  We will need to run the boat a bit to see if this suggests just a bad sensor, a loose wire or a true oil problem (the tech thinks the sensor was bad and we should be fine now).  I spent the morning cleaning and laundering everything in the forward stateroom since it was drenched in saltwater.  Once back in Hampton, we also found that the stabilizers we just had worked on at Atlantic Yacht Basin (AYB) for the 3rd time in two years were leaking again.  Will this never end?

     We called AYB and they said to come back and they would make things right.  So Thursday afternoon after the Caterpillar tech completed his work, we returned to AYB in Chesapeake, VA.  They pulled Southern Style out of the water on Friday (4th time) to redo the port stabilizer.  They worked all day and had us back in the water Friday at the end of their work day.  Saturday we had planned to leave to make our way north, but no.  Checking the stabilizer Saturday morning Keith realized they had a bolt too long and it was hitting the ram arm of the stabilizer as well as material used to seal the bolts on the ram arm resulting in damage to the seal and more leaking.  Both stabilizers showed the same problem.  So we did not leave and instead called the manager at the yard.  To say that Keith was pissed off is the understatement of the year.  Without going into the sailor vocabulary that was used, the manager at AYB apologized and said they would make things right (again).  AYB plan to haul the boat out of the water Monday (5th time) and work on the stabilizers again.  I do not know how long this may take or what all they may be redoing at this point.  Hopefully no more than 3-5 days.

Keith and I have had several days to clean up the mess in the forward stateroom and clean Southern Style inside and out.  We at least feel like we have a handle on the rest of the boat minus the stabilizers.  Despite the disaster of last Wednesday, nothing actually was damaged or broke due to the bad seas and it looks like we were able to get everything cleaned to satisfaction which is amazing.  So as I said; it is not always all fun.  I hope we can eventually make our way north to New England this summer and meet up with our friends.  That lobster is going to taste mighty good once we get there.  I will keep everyone up to date.