On the day that all the stars aligned for us, my oldest son and I climbed aboard with hopes of making the 9AM opening at the Berkley Bridge. Both engines started relatively easily. We cast off lines and headed down the river. I asked my son to check that we had water coming out of the exhaust on both sides. He reported water on Port exhaust, but not Starboard. Hmmm, that's strange. Starboard is the newer engine, not the one I would expect trouble from. I went below and lifted the bunk to take a peek at the engine. I couldn't see anything glaringly wrong. The water pump belt was in tact and turning. I figured maybe the impeller had dry rotted over the winter. Not wanting to miss our appointment with the travel lift, I shut down the Starboard engine and continued on Port alone.
We made it through the Eastern Branch bridge without incident. As we approached Norfolk Southern bridge 5, I could see we had problems. One of the two spans was down, but more troubling, there was a large Army LCU coming out of a dry dock near the bridge. At the same time, there was tug with a massive barge idling and waiting for the bridge to open as well. We stayed well back by the Campostella bridge, not wanting to get in anybody's way, especially with just one engine to maneuver with.
After a few minutes of holding position at the Campostella bridge wondering if Bridge 5 would open in time for us to make the 9AM opening at the Berkley, our Port engine died. Oh sh!t! The tide, which was high when we left, was now starting to go out. We were being carried slowly down toward NS bridge 5, the Army LCU, and the tug/barge. I told my son to unfurl the jib while I tried to restart the Port engine. Just as he got the jib trimmed and set, I got the engine fired back up. At that point, I decided the prudent thing to do was return home and regroup.
We motorsailed back up river without incident. As we approached our home dock, I decided to start up the Starboard engine, thinking a few minutes of run time without cooling wouldn't do any harm and would be very helpful in getting back on the dock. We landed the boat and tied up without any problems. I quickly shut down both engines and went down to see if I could figure out what was up with the Starboard raw water problem. Lifting the bunk up, I was greeted by the sight of about 6 inches of water in the bilge, which is normally dry. Hmmm, this is curious.
That's odd, I don't remember all this water being here before
Yep, this is definitely not right
Manual bilge pump works great
I called my son down to watch the engine while I started it back up. He immediately started yelling for me to shut it down. Water was gushing out of a hose that had blown off the supply side of the heat exchanger. Apparently, the impeller was working fine! We re-attached the hose and disconnected the discharge side of the heat exchanger. We got water there too. The next in line was the mixing elbow. Removing that, I found that it was nearly completely clogged with carbon.
The culprit
Sophisticated carbon removal system
We employed a highly sophisticated technique involving a mallet, chisel, screwdriver, and backyard picnic table to remove as much of the carbon as we could. A retest with the garden hose showed satisfactory water flow through the mixing elbow. A few dollars for a new gasket to go between the mixing elbow and the heat exchanger, and we were back in business. Unfortunately, we had missed the bridge opening and the tide was almost out. The haulout would have to wait.
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