That Sinking Feeling

That Sinking Feeling
We were getting ready to leave La Paz and head over to the mainland. I was more than ready. La Paz is not my favorite place. They have a saying there that once you come to La Paz you will keep coming back or even stay and never leave because she tends to attach a bungee cord to anyone who comes there. I can assure you, there is no bungee cord attachment between La Paz and me. It’s vibe and mine just do not mesh. Something bad always seems to happen when La Paz is in our plans or on our horizon. We have had engine failure twice trying to get there. It is the only place we have ever drug and the night we drug happened to be when the engine was completely torn down so there was nothing we could do. Fortunately for the boats around us we drug closer to the shoal and ended up re-anchoring up close and personal to SV Perspective who would eventually end up being a buddy boat for a season. This time however, our arrival was uneventful. We came in under full power. We anchored well. We got lots of boat projects done. We made several new friends. Our stay in La Paz had overall been positive, maybe the spell was finally broken. We had fuel, water, and were provisioned. We had a good weather window with about 12 boats planning to cross at the same time, so we were in good company. We were leaving on a positive note, or so I thought. That was before she said, “Here hold my beer!”. La Paz was not done with us, not by a long shot.
Everything was secured down below, the engine was warmed up and Dave was forward pulling the anchor. The anchor came up and I eased the throttle forward. The rpms increased but she didn’t go into gear. Throttled back and tried again and still she didn’t slip into gear. Dave took the helm and messed with the throttle….Great! Transmission problems! We were drifting, a few more attempts and some clunking and banging below and suddenly all seemed well. She slipped into gear and we were off. Hmmm, that was weird. Everything seemed fine now. We were up to speed and moving through the long channel and of course into a head wind and chop. We made our way along all of the buoys and around the freighter at the end of the channel and still with all the twists and turns we had head wind and chop. I was at the helm, we were losing speed slowly and she seemed a little sluggish but with all the chop it was difficult to tell what was going on. Dave went below to use the head. A few minutes later there was a flurry of activity down below. Dave shouted up that we were sinking and he needed help down below. Great…..we were in the shipping channel, the ferry was coming in, yachts coming and going on either side of me. I locked the wheel and dashed below. Dave was working the manual bilge pump. I checked the through hauls, all were intact and none had failed. Back up to the helm to dodge traffic. Dave left his post at the manual pump and was checking the prop shaft. Water was gushing in from somewhere in the stern of the boat but there was too much water on the boat, it was up to the soles (floorboards for you landlubbers). That meant we had about 4 feet of water in the boat and it was still coming in. One of the hoses on the electric bilge pump failed and started spraying water that it was pumping out back into the boat. Dave shut off that pump and went back to the manual bilge. He had to get the water level down so he could see where the water was coming in. The La Paz channel is very long. We were at least 2 hours away from a lift. Turning around was not an option. If we sunk in the channel, we would be a huge navigational hazard blocking a very narrow channel. I started looking for a sandy beach. At least if we beached her on sand, we wouldn’t be in the channel and damage to the Dragon would be as little as possible. If Dave couldn’t stop the leak, that was our best option. I angled over closer to land and identified places we could potentially beach the boat. Dave kept pumping, I kept identifying sandy beaches. As we neared each beach I would holler down to Dave and ask if I needed to take her in and responded each time with a firm “NO”. After about a half hour or 45 minutes, he had enough water off the boat to see what was wrong. The grounding system to the prop shaft had failed and when it tore lose it peeled the boot of the shaft seal back but didn’t tear it. Thank God. The only way to replace a dripless seal is with a haul out and we had no way to get the boat to a ship yard. I was looking at the charts and was running out of beaches. Soon we would be in San Lorenzo with nothing but reefs of either side. I was getting more and more nervous. The last beach came and went, we were now committed to staying afloat. Dave continued to work feverishly below. He would pump for awhile and then crawl into the lazarette and work on the shaft seal. Finally, he was able to work the boot of the shaft seal back into place and secure the clamps. More pumping and at last there was no more water coming into the boat and all the sea water was finally on the outside of the boat where it belonged. During this time, I had passed the last sandy beach and had moved into San Lorenzo channel. Dave came up blistered and bloodied but crisis averted, we were no longer sinking. Heart rate back to normal, the pit in my stomach easing, I was looking forward to spending a couple restful days in the Los Meurtos anchorage to recover. Everyone had told us what a calm and beautiful anchorage it was. We arrived in the dark as per usual for us with our buddy boats guiding us in. The anchorage was not calm, it was windy and choppy with conditions increasing over night. By morning the wind was whipping at over 20 knots. There was not going to be any rest here. We barely managed to get our dinghy down to go grab some oil from sv Perspective as we were also having oil pressure problems. We grabbed the oil, pulled the dinghy, pulled the anchor and headed out. We had to get away from this place before anything else could go wrong. Within a couple miles we had our sails up, the engine was off, the sea water remained on the outside of the boat and that is how the rest of the trip played out. It was our longest sail since leaving on this adventure. Three full days under sail. It was blissful after such a stressful start. We made it all the way to Punta Mita under sail before we had to turn the engine back on. We motored into Banderas Bay and dropped anchor. It was so nice to see trees and mountains again. I love the Huanacaxtle trees, I feel like I can breathe here. We had a few weeks to get ready for Christmas and hosting Sierra and Cam on the boat. Life was good. Sea water continued to remain on the outside of the boat….for now.
Sierra and Cam arrived, we made many more memories including a turtle release, building sand castles and teaching Cam the joys of Cribbage. The poor guy was such a good sport. Towards the end of their stay we brought the boat into the marina to celebrate the new year at Octopus Gardens and a few days later they were gone and we were on our way to complete a boat delivery with a friend. The Dragon got to rest quietly in a slip for the next month. During this time the salt water incursion of the previous near sinking left some residue behind and the salt and oxygen went silently to work with nothing to impede it. Insert ominous music here, that sinking feeling was about to return.
We arrived back in La Cruz after a successful beat north on the Tabula Rasa. We only had a day and a half to get ship shape before heading back out to anchor. We provisioned and completed a few boat projects and prepared to leave the marina. Fired the engine, cast the lines and put her in gear. The clunking started immediately, something sounded like it had shifted down below but we were in the fairway and the anchorage was just a short distance away. Once again we were in a high volume narrow channel and needed to clear quickly out of the way before we could address the boat issues. We cleared the channel and Dave went below and once again he shouted up we are sinking. The shaft seal again. Find a place to anchor. I just got beyond the buoy and Dave dropped the anchor and I cut the engine. We had minimal rode out and we had no time to set the anchor. Dave began working on the shaft seal. I was working one of the bilge pumps. I placed a call to the yard and let them know we are sinking. The shipyard responded that they had a super yacht in the lift and they needed at least an hour to prepare before they could haul our boat out. We had to keep her afloat for an hour with the anchor barely down and time for the thermals to start building. I hailed the fleet to ask for assistance, we were sinking fast and needed to buy some time. I went to manage the manual bilge pump, our beast of a pump that moves huge volumes of water and after a couple of pulls on the handle, the membrane tore, once again pumping water into the boat instead of out. The one bilge pump capable of handling and moving water out as fast as it was coming in was out of commission. We were down to one pump but between Dave stemming the flow coming in and the working bilge pump pushing water out we were buying the time we needed but we couldn’t fire the engine. The fleet rallied and hip strapped the Dragon to two dinghies and began moving her towards the shipyard. They were scurrying about the yard to get the yacht down and prepare to lift us. They deployed pumps to the dock that we could use to move more water off the boat if we needed to but we were still doing OK. Dave was pretty sure that this time the shaft seal was torn and would have to be replaced. The lift was made ready. We maneuvered her into place using spring lines. The sling was placed but they didn’t understand the shape of our keel so the forward sling began to slide. The operator made some adjustments and soon we were in the air at a most awkward angle but everything seemed to be holding. They stabilized the sling and provided us with a ladder and left us hanging….literally hanging in the sling. Welcome to Mexico. Nothing interferes with a siesta, not even and emergency. We were kind of in shock at first. I wandered up the ladder and then down. We had drawn a bit of a crowd and Dave was talking to different folks about what was going on. Finally the people disbursed and Dave meandered back to the boat and decided to take another look below. It looks a little different when you don’t have gallons of water shooting in at you. He assessed the damage. It didn’t seem like the boot on the shaft seal was torn. This time the other end of it had come loose and folded back on itself. It had looked torn under all that water but with the water off the boat it looked like it wasn’t a complete disaster after all. He grabbed his tools and tackled the seal. Within a few minutes he had it clamped in place again. By the time the workers returned from their siesta we were ready to try her back in the water. They dropped her in the water, a few little adjustments and no more water in the boat. We headed back out to the anchorage a few dollars lighter in the wallet but floating once again. Just once, I want an uneventful passage, just once.