Regata del Sol al Sol

Crisis Handled

By John Gardner

We have heard time and again that one failure on a sailboat exposes a second failure and even a third and suddenly the boat and crew is in peril. Well true to that maxim, I nearly sank my 38' Irwin Mark I on the way to Mexico in the 2010 Regata del Sol al Sol race.

It was a fairly uneventful race for the first three days. After we cleared the Sunshine Skyway Bridge and the mouth of Tampa Bay on Friday afternoon, a nice breeze filled in from the east-southeast and we were making good time right down the rhumb line toward Isla Mujeres. By Saturday afternoon, the 20-2 5 knot breeze had shifted more to the south and eventually, by Sunday, we found ourselves tacking back and forth in front of a decidedly southerly breeze. By then, we were taking a pretty good pounding against the 8 to 10 foot swells.

The six member crew easily slid into our four hour watch schedule and we began to debate our finish time. As owner and captain, I assigned myself the 12 to 4 watch figuring that I was best equipped to handle the crazy stuff that always comes up at 0100. Through Monday morning, though, there was nothing much to deal with except a little seasickness. Everything was just great! And, then the high water alarm went off.

My high water alarm is actually a car horn wired to a regular marine float switch that I mounted at the top of the sump in the engine room. The sump is about 12 inches square and 10 inches deep. It’s an adequate design and my 2000 GPH Rule pump has easily handled the open garden hose I thrown at it from time to time without triggering the high water alarm. So, when the alarm sounded, I knew in an instant that we had a serious problem on our hands.

As soon as the alarm went off, I quickly opened one of the engine room compartment covers and horrified found seawater flowing freely back and forth in the engine room. As we rode up and down the waves, the water would flow forward under the floor boards and then back to again flood the engine room to a depth of at least 12 inches. At that point, I figured we had cracked the hull with all the pounding we had been doing and that we were going down, right there, 40 miles off the north coast of Cuba. I quickly thought through my abandon ship procedure. My idea was to try to keep the boat afloat for as long as possible, and head for the closest land, albeit “hostile territory.”

I realized quickly that the incoming water was going to flood the batteries and short out all the electronics, particularly the VHF radio. My house bank of 6 golf cart batteries and 2 starting batteries lie side by side in a shallow trough just under the saloon floor. The batteries sit on a deck that is about 4 inches above the level of the engine room floor, so it was not going to be long before the batteries were flooded over.

Step one, start the engine. With the breeze blowing from the south, we would need the engine to motor toward the Cuban coast. Moreover, we needed the raw water intake to help out the bilge pump and then take over the pumping when the batteries were shorted out. While the cockpit crew started the engine, I made short work of the hose clamps holding the intake hose onto the thruhull. I figured the Perkins 4-108 would keep running and pumping out the bilge until the water rose to the level of the air intake. I keep a couple of those interchangeable screwdrivers close at hand for quick fixes. Without a bit in place, the nut-driver is the perfect size for hose clamps.

Step two; use the VHF to call for help. “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday.” No response. Again. No response. And again, no response. Realizing quickly that we were beyond radio range of any other race boats as well as whatever passes for a coast guard in Cuba, my next

thought was to hand up the satellite phone to the cockpit with instructions to “call somebody, anybody.” Thinking back, it is actually funny that we debated the issue of who to call. We quickly settled on the father of one of our crew: he owns his own marine brokerage business and we figured he would be the quickest to grasp our situation – particularly our latitude and longitude position – and know how to contact the authorities. Ugh. No answer. While the crew continued trying to contact the outside world on the sat phone and VHF, and my brother gathered our ship’s papers and passports so we could avoid the wrath of the Cuban authorities, I went looking for that crack that was letting the flood waters in.

Step three, find the leak. Beginning closest to the engine room and moving forward (where the EPIRB was located), I lifted each floor access panel and looked for the source of the innundation. With seawater flowing back and forth under the soul as we continued under sail, I reached as far as I could inside each access port feeling for what I thought would be a mighty crack in the hull. One, two, three ports checked and no crack.

Under the vee-berth in the forward cabin is a fairly large storage area. I keep my spinnaker and spare hoses up there out of the way. On this trip, I also carried 275 stuffed “Teddy bear” toys that we were taking to hand out to the kids on the pier in Mexico. When I finally removed all the cargo we had stowed “up front,” I found our nemeses. It was not a cracked hull but a simple cracked plumbing fitting.

The discharge hose from the forward head leads to a tee under the forward vee-berth. Up from the tee leads to an on/off ball cock then to the forward holding tank which is also located under the vee-berth. Down from the tee is a short piece of 1 1/2 inch hose, then a plastic male barbed adapter (male barb on one end, male threads on other end) that was screwed into the thruhull. Aha! We had our breech. The plastic adapter had sheered off and seawater was free- flowing into the boat through the thruhull.

The fix was simple and obvious: close the thruhull. Disaster averted.

With the inflow stopped, I returned to the flood of seawater we had taken on. The engine was still running with the raw water intake hose pulling water from the sump along with the electric bilge pump. Just when I thought I had matters in hand, crew in the cockpit reported that the engine temperature was coming up fast and nearly into the “red zone” on the gauge. Thinking that the water inside the boat was simply hotter than raw seawater, I made no adjustments. But, after about 2 minutes more, the high temperature rose to the point that the alarm sounded. My first thought was to back down the RPM’s and let the engine cool normally. After another 2 minutes or so with no let up in the alarm, I decided we had to shut down the engine and identify the problem or risk killing the engine.

All the while, the electric bilge pump continued to operate. I had remembered to check around the intake cowling of the electric pump to be sure nothing was blocking the intake. Not so with the raw water intake: I’d forgotten to check the sea strainer for debris dislodged by the flood. And, sure enough, there was my problem: the sea strainer was choked full with debris, particularly toilet paper ... of all things.

Before the disaster, I always stored my spare paper products under the sink in the forward head. They were out of the way and dry and the space was adequate for 5 or 6 spare rolls of paper towel and a large case of toilet paper. In the flood, though, the toilet paper got wet and did what it is supposed to do: it broke apart into tiny pieces that ended up clogging the sea strainer.

With the sea strainer cleared and the intake hose reconnected to the thruhull, the engine was back to normal. And, on its own, the electric bilge pump was able to clear out the rest of the

flood waters. The whole ordeal lasted only about 35 minutes, but it sure seemed to be longer at the time.

Some things we learned ...

One, no plastic plumbing fittings. If you have any plastic fittings on anything, replace them with brass or nylon immediately. The plastic ones break, just like wine glass thrown into the fireplace.

Two, check your thruhulls to be sure they are not frozen. Mine was not, but it easily could have been since I hadn’t checked in about a year.

Three, don’t store paper products down low where they can get wet in a flood. Not only will you get soggy toilet paper, but you just might sink your boat if the little pieces clog the bilge pump.

Four, have an emergency contact you know will answer your call. It was nearly 2 hours before anybody we called got our message and called us back. A corollary is that you must understand the limitations of VHF. You must have an alternate system for contacting the outside world in an emergency. We opted for the sat phone, but an SSB is on my short list of upgrades.

Five, evaluate the situation carefully and methodically before reaching for the panic button. In this instance, I had just awaken from at least 4 hours sleep. I was rested and clearheaded. I went through my mental checklist step by step and planned my attack based on the information I was collecting and evaluating. Of course, I could have reached for the EPIRB at the first alarm and ordered the lift raft deployed; but, obviously, they were not needed. What was needed was clear thinking and quick, careful analysis.

Six, know your boat. Every captain and every owner absolutely must know every nook and cranny of his or her boat. Know where the thruhulls are, know how to close them, know where the plugs are and how to use them. Know where the EPIRB, manual bilge pump handle, fire extinguishers, flares, sungun, flashlights, handheld GPS, handheld VHF, ship’s papers (and passports) are stored. Be able to locate them “by feel” in pitch dark.

Seven, choose your crew carefully. As owner and skipper, you are responsible for the safety and well-being of everyone on board. I know where my safety equipment is stowed and how to use it. I do not know that my crew had that same knowledge. And, that was my fault: I did not provide a safety briefing or assign tasks for an abandon ship or even a man overboard scenario. On my next offshore trip, everyone will know where everything is located and how to operate it. We will talk about what to do before we need to do it. To their credit, my crew did respond immediately during the crisis to my every order, even the one about using the sat phone to call “somebody, anybody.” Very importantly, they didn’t burden me with questions about what I was doing and what did I think. They stayed calm and let me save the ship.

Epilogue ... on the first day of our return trip to St. Petersburg, Florida – after 5 solid days of partying in Mexico – I noticed the bilge pump was cycling “on” a lot more than it should have been. At that point, I had plugged the forward head thruhull with a threaded brass fitting acquired from a local hardware store in Isla Mujeres. And, I figured I didn’t really have a crack in the hull because we hadn’t sunk at the dock during our international visit.

To identify the source of the flooding, I first switched off the fresh water pump. Then, I switched “off” the bilge pump to get an idea of the rate of the flow. Then, I watched the lip of the sump to see if I could identify where the water was flowing from. And, it was coming in pretty fast.