After 40 hours of being very frugal with the leccy (apart from the fridge), we woke up to find our house batteries at 10.4 volts. The boys were most amused to find the TV would show pictures but no sound.
So we fired up the engine for an hour to heat the water and prop up our batteries, shattering the peace and waking a few birds. The battery monitor showed that the hour had given us just a measly 30 Amps, so we shelved our plans for a stopover in Keyhaven and decided to go to Yarmouth to give us a decent charge.
Thinking Yarmouth might be busy, we set off early against the tide and let the boys have a play around steering the boat on the way.
All was going great until I noticed white smoke coming from the exhaust. It caught me somewhat by surprise, and in that moment although I knew it wasn’t great news, my mind went blank and I couldn’t remember what that meant, so I reached for the phone and called Mr Goose.
I got as far as saying, “white smoke, that’s overheating isn’t it…” when the engine overheat alarm sounded. “Yes, the white smoke is steam”, replied Paul, “I’d better let you go shut her down”.
I didn’t fancy the ‘easy’ option of running with the tide as the superyacht regatta was in full swing at Cowes, along with thousands of other boats, and so for the next two hours, we tacked into wind and tide, just about holding station against these combined forces of nature while I went below to try find out what had happened.
The culprit turned out to be weed – but the blockage turned out to be more serious than just emptying the raw water strainer. Even putting the tender foot pump into the inlet pipe and pumping furiously didn’t seem to allow more than a trickle of water through.
Eventually, after checking the impeller and plenty more vigourous pumping, we got enough water flow to keep the engine happy at under 1500 RPM, and we limped our way to Yarmouth for a total journey time of 4 hours!
Some more furious foot pump action in the marina and the blockage finally cleared (the sweet sound of bubbles under the hull), and the engine seems to be running at full steam again (fingers crossed!).
Exhausted as we were, we decided to take the boys for a walk to Fort Victoria and then treated ourselves to a slap up dinner at the Wheatsheaf.
Costs:
Walk ashore: £25
Leccy: £3.50
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