We had gone to bed early last night, hush those bad thoughts! Dozing off I heard an unusual amout of activity on the dock,cruisers bedtime here is around 7.30pm so any activity after that is strange. Then I heard a voice calling for an underwater light. Oh dear sounds like trouble. TBH bounded, well crawled, out of bed, grabbed the light and went to join the boaters 'committee' on the dock.
Joe, in the next slip, was taking on water, fast. The bilge pumps were manned, John, the manager here, was in the water looking for the external thru-hull that appeared to be the cause of the problem and everyone else was offering advice! Sometime later I retired back to bed, the 'men' were firmly in charge and there seemed to be more than enough of them confusing the issue! Besided which the boat didn't appear to be settling too far in the water, no need for real panic it seemed.
It turns out that an elbow joint had broken to a thru- hull(?), the handle of the seacock was missing and a wooden plug magnificently hammered home underwater wasn't staunching the flow. After various attempts with underwater putty, a crash pad, more wooden plugs the leak was finally stopped with some aluminium tape and a couple of hose clamps! Too much excitment for me...
Talking about events this morning we realised that although we have the correct size plug attached to each seacock we need to have a selection of plugs available as well. We have arranged to buy some of the aluminium tape that was the final solution. I must service the seacocks even more often!!
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