To St. Augustine but Davy Jones has different ideas...

Another 10 hours and 200 some odd miles to our south lies our next destination, St. Augustine Fl.

June 17, 8:18 AM 633 hours.
Just before our departure we posed for a couple of pics. Here is the blogger, navigator and the papa razzi, Capt’n Gina posing in our newly acquired Coinjock attire. Not to be outdone, the financier and Captain when Gina lets him, poses in his finest T-shirt.We bid Charleston adieu and headed out to sea under grey warm skies. As we turned southerly at our first waypoint, we put the seas to our back and the ride smoothed out. Shortly, the sun broke thru and the seas further laid down nicely. Bobby disappeared into the cabin only to return with the best breakfast sandwiches ever! He had a bit of a time with trying to tip the griddle, crack the eggs and balance them on the heat until they solidified. Cooking at sea can be challenging. Two eggs were lost to his efforts but the result was very tasty and we gobbled them down. Somehow the sea makes you very hungry.

The day was glorious as we made our way. I got to enjoy a bit of time out on the front deck. While out on the deck, I noticed the boat was suddenly straining, as if it were a gas boat, to climb the seas in front of it, or so I thought. Then Bobby slowed the boat to idle from our 22 knots. On the bridge, Bobby explained that the starboard engine could only do 1800 RPM rather than the 2270 RPM we had been doing. So we tried taking it out of sync and running them up individually. The port engine would wind up to only 2100 and the starboard only 1800. Something was wrong. To the engine room we go, leaving Gina to steer at idle. Bobby lifted the hatch and we were shocked. There was fluid sloshing all about at the base of the stairs, oil? diesel? water? Upon closer inspection it was a foot of black water over the floorboards ! This is serious. Bobby held the manual switches for the bilge and I watched as hundreds of gallons of black water spill into the ocean. When no more was coming out it was time for us to find the cause. Down in the engine room it was a total mess, black stuff was everywhere.
These engines were brilliant white.


But where did the water come from? It took us awhile, but finally Bobby spotted it when we cranked the engines up. The muffler on the starboard engine cracked. Water and soot was spilling into the bilge when we powered up. It was kind of a two pronged problem first the crack and then the soot blocked the air filters that caused the engine to slow down. Now what? We’re thirty miles offshore. We discover that we can safely run the engines at 1400 RPM and that gives us ten knots. So we plot a course for the nearest land and begin the slow arduous journey to a port in a rolling sea. We check all the marinas near our target and finally decide on one, we correct our plot only to discover we’ve got 40 nautical miles to go. Somewhere around ten nautical miles out from land we get cell coverage again and Bobby calls our home base and chief researcher Tom Fantasia. He explains that we have a crack in the muffler and we’re trying to figure out if it is repairable and if so, what is the best way to effect repairs. We continue our journey and shortly thereafter Tom calls us back. The mufflers are all fiberglass, there is nothing strange inside them just baffles, we can patch the outside and be able to run again. However the air filters are another thing. They are clogged with soot and not allowing enuf air to the engines. Can we get new ones or can we clean these? Tom says there is a procedure with certain chemicals to clean them, however we don’t have the chemicals, we’ll have to MacGyver our way around this.

Port Royal the marina we're heading for seems to have everything we need. Bobby calls ahead for a slip and explains what we’ll need. Bad news they don’t have any fiberglass, good news there is a West Marine 1 mile away and they have courtesy cars.

We finally get into port around 4 PM and are greeted by Larry, he was the nicest most courteous man you’ll ever want to meet. We talked while fueling only to find out he has friends in the BVI’s and loves to charter there. After fueling, we slid the boat forward and then made an assessment of what we’ll need to begin repairs. Up at the office Larry checked us in. This marina is small but spotless and meticulously maintained with nice little homey touches here and there. They are obviously very proud of their marina and it shows.
Anyway, we needed a courtesy car but Larry didn’t have any available so he lent us his ! We asked him where the West Marine was but more important where was a liquor store so we could replenish our white wine and rum! As luck goes, the liquor store is right next door to the West Marine. Finally something is going our way. The West Marine clerk was very helpful in making sure we had everything we needed and how to use it. He didn’t have replacement filters so we asked what chemicals he had that would clean the diesel soot. Apparently down here, they aren’t as crazy about things as we are back in Boston, he said just use Dawn dish soap. Both Bobby and I had forgotten that little trick to get rid of diesel. We got our wine and rum stopped at the Piggly Wiggly for soap and headed back to the boat. First things first, we ice down the wine. Gina started a welcomed laundry while Bob and I washed the tremendous amount of black soot off the outside of the boat. It was still really hot in the engine room and the muffler had to drain first so we decided to have a bottle of wine before tackling the muffler.

Bobby sanded all the paint and prepped the surface of the fiberglass, a dirty dusty and very hot job considering the engine room was hot and the temp outside was 90 plus 90 percent relative humidity. The crack was bulging in one place and about 12 inches long, there was another deformation in the fiberglass about three inches from the original crack. We concurred that was the start of another crack. We’d have to fix both.

I cleaned and washed the air filters. They were so clogged with soot we couldn’t see daylight thru them. Now it was time to fiberglass. Since we got fast set epoxy it was important for us to have everything prepared ahead of time. Gina was the timer for the pot life, I was the mixer and soaker and Bobby laid up the glass. A little while later we were finished, looked better than new.

We cleaned up, took showers and at 11 at night finally had a great meal that Gina cooked up for us. A celebratory bottle of wine and bed. Tomorrow we’ll find out how well we did and hopefully continue down to St. Augustine.

Engine room pics courtesy of Bilge Rat Bob.. Papa Razzi Gina didn't want to mess her hair.

BTW here's a pic where Bilge Rat Bob had to crawl..

BTW If you don’t want to comment, we’d still love to hear from you. My email is Gary, Bob’s is Bob and Gina’s is Gina.