When traveling the high seas in a 64 year old boat, it is great if your sailing companion is not only a good captain, but an expert woodworker, engineer, and mechanic. Luckily, my husband is all of those things. He’s also very attentive to my coffee needs. Another bonus!
After tying up at Black Dog Wharf, Joe topped off the fuel in the engine and then checked the oil. It didn’t register on the dipstick so he walked to the Shell station and got some oil to add to the engine. He had to add 6.5 quarts of oil which could only mean one thing. We were leaking some serious oil. But why? How? And where was it coming from? This is a brand new Beta Marine engine with only 44 hours on it. WTF?
But instead of completely freaking out, once Joe realized the engine was leaking, he set about trying to diagnose the problem and fix it.
Due to our tight schedule because of obligations at home, and the reports of dangerous weather at the end of the week, we did not have much time to spare. If we had to delay more than one day, we’d be delaying at least a week, and if that happened, there was no way we could finish the journey together. I started thinking that I might have to catch a ferry to the mainland and take a train home, leaving Joe in Martha’s Vineyard to fix the boat and later sail it on to Mystic without me.
For three hours Joe worked to identify the cause of the leak. Although our passage down from Chatham was rough, it should not have been so rough as to damage the engine. The problem is that you can’t really get under the engine on a boat as you can with a car. The whole thing needs to be lifted up and that was not something that could happen tied up at Black Dog Wharf.
Eventually, around 7:15 pm we decided there was no way we were leaving in the morning. We should have dinner, sleep and tackle the problem the next day. It would be a Monday and we were right next to Gannon and Benjamin Marine Railway. Maybe we could get some assistance there. (Of course, we forgot that Monday was Columbus Day, so that plan didn’t shake out!) Joe showered and we wandered over to the famous Black Dog Tavern for dinner. Too defeated salty sailors, we were. But the lobster Mac and cheese sure was good.
We had a rough night sleep as the northerly wind (the one that we had originally hoped would push us all the way to Block Island on Monday) tossed the boat around next to the pier. I got up numerous times to look out the hatch and make sure we hadn’t drifted out to sea.
Monday morning we got up ready to tackle this problem head on. I was optimistic that Joe could fix it in time for us to get out of Vineyard Haven and ride the northerly down to Cuttyhunk so that we could at least make some progress. But nothing happens quickly on a boat. Things are hard to reach, parts are hard to find, and you are bouncing along in the water the whole time.
Fortunately, there was a hardware store and a WestMarine within walking distance. There was also a Napa Auto Parts about a mile up the hill. We made multiple trips to these places, plus a Plumbing Supply Shop that I found. There was a lot of dirty work and a fair amount of cursing. There was optimism and defeat, but we just kept tackling the problem, the same way we do with our production jobs at home.
In order to get to the engine, Joe had to remove the stairs that go from the deck to the cabin down below. This meant using a series of acrobatic movements to get up and down that I refer to as boat parkour. After a few rounds I got pretty good at these maneuvers until I used the grab bar next to the companionway doors to pull myself up with too much force and ripped it right out of the bulkhead. Add that to the list of repairs for another day.
The wind was rocking us around so much that at one point Joe emerged from down below to see the dock line that was tying us to the pier on our Port side was literally pulling the bulwark away from the side of the boat. And the line had even pulled a cleat out of the deck. More cursing, and Joe jumped to the dock and retied the boat a different way to prevent more damage.
At this point I was ready to lay down and give up. I thought I would cry. But Joe just kept on working. I took a deep breath and returned to his side to offer up whatever assistance I could.
Joe had diagnosed that we were suffering one of two problems. Either there was a crack in the oil pan, which he couldn’t get to without lifting the engine, or there was a compromise in this other tube coming out of the engine. This tube was something to help make changing the oil easier. It’s a part of the engine that is a convenience, not a necessity. So we figured if we could remove that and seal up the fitting then we could stop the leak. A simple solution but a complex fix. There was an elbow fitting that could not removed because there wasn’t enough room to make the turn. I suggested capping the elbow instead. We could not find the exact part we needed to do this, so we MacGyvered together a fix, and at 5:45 pm added 9.5 liters of oil to fill her back up. We fired up the engine and prayed for no leaks.
At 6:30 pm, we shut her down—no leaks! We had missed our window to set sail for Cuttyhunk, but we were determined to leave for Block Island in the morning and complete our journey only one day behind schedule.
Now we just had to clean the oil out of the bilge (ugh) and do other clean up and prep work. The wind had shifted again and the boat was calm and steady. We ate chicken sandwiches and celebrated our ability to fix this major problem, in an unknown town, on a holiday, with little outside assistance!
That night we slept well. Which was a good thing because the next day proved to be much longer, and more harrowing than anything we had experienced thus far!
