Fire, Flood and Explosion

Fire, Flood and Explosion - Friday 14 December 2012 – Day 10 Crossing

When Steve ran sailing courses aboard Chewsy, one of the first items on the agenda was a safety briefing for the new crew. Part of this included a discussion about  the 3 things you really don’t want to happen on a boat, namely a fire, a flood or an explosion. He was always able to say “none of these things have ever happened aboard Chewsy”. Not any more.

We were not having a great day on Friday 14^th December.

The day before we had reached the half way mark in the crossing. Only another 1050 miles to go. The weather was heavy on Thursday with the wind south easterly 6 and 7, though the sea was not as high as we have had previously. There was also constant heavy rain, which was getting both us and the boat very wet. Added to this, we needed to work on the foredeck to take down the pole from the genoa and set it for broad reaching.

The conditions were not really conducive to cooking and eating a planned  celebratory meal washed down with some bubbly, so we settled for a brandy each instead.

I was glad to wake up on Friday morning. The sea is very lumpy and overnight I have acquired lots more bruises to my arms and legs. During the day we saw a freighter, and also spoke by VHF to Olaf from Sweden on a catamaran, who was in the same bit of ocean as us for a while.

In the afternoon we took the pole down again [It had gone up again 21:00 last night] and set up for beam reaching in a southerly 4.

At 10pm we had the engine on as the wind had gone round to WNW 4 [on the nose]. We had taken the genoa down as well. Steve was concerned we had something around the propeller as we were not making our normal 5.5kn at 1600 revs. At times we were only making 3 knots. We looked at all the reasons, rubbish on the prop, barnacles, surface current. None gave a satisfactory answer and it did make us anxious. We were by the chart table sheltering from the horrendous relentless downpour with associated boat roll, debating whether to put up the mainsail, when an alarm went off. We looked at each other in horror unable to recognise it immediately. Steve recognised it first. The bilge alarm! He dragged the carpet away from the steps and opened the bilge hatch. Water, water everywhere sloshing from port to starboard and back again with the roll. The forward bilges were dry suggesting the problem was aft. As Steve went round checking and turning off all the seacocks, I did what he told us to do in the safety brief. I stuck my finger in the water and tasted it. It was fresh water! Hmm. A check of the water tanks showed we had lost no water from there.

The engine bay bilges were full of water. Steve was busy emptying lockers to get at sea cocks. What a mess.

I remembered something else Steve says on his safety brief – that there is nothing more effective at emptying bilges than worried crew with a bucket and sponge. Enter one worried crew with a big bucket and sponge. The bilge alarm is screaming away at about 2 second intervals. Very motivational. My aim was to slow the alarm response time down. This would mean we were winning. We worked separately, Steve trying to find the water source, me getting rid of the water. We also had 2 bilge pumps working as well. I lost count of how many 10 litre buckets of water I emptied down the sink. In between buckets I helped empty the aft cabin bunk. Full of stores for the crossing.  We also emptied the cockpit locker in torrential rain. In here were such things as 5, 25l diesel containers, a black and decker workmate and a dinghy engine.

I decided not to tell Steve that the shower bilge pump had blocked and failed as he couldn’t do anything about it. Part of my brain considered a pan pan might be necessary if the water ingress was not halted. The thought was pushed to one side as the main pump and the woman with the bucket and sponge kept on. Eventually, the alarm slowed and activated perhaps every 10 seconds. Progress. Steve shouted that things should start to improve as he had found the problem. Did he need help? No. Back to the bucket. Eventually the alarm stopped and only sounded every minute and slowly stopped altogether.

We now had time to draw breath. The boat was in a complete shambles. Steve showed me the cause of the problem – 2 washers and a small piece of string. When he had opened the gas locker to check it, he found the gas bottles floating. He had thrust his arm into the locker to find the drain and pulled out the washers and string. The locker then emptied quite quickly.

The locker had filled with rainwater over the past 2 days, which had overflowed into the cockpit locker by a route we haven’t found yet. From there it went via hose cut outs into the engine bay and then to the bilges.

We don’t know where the washers have come from as we don’t use them. They may have been hiding in there for the past 11 years.

However, the boat and we were now safe. As the rain continued to pour down, we began the huge clean up operation. Steve got out our ‘spare’ manual pump, attached it to a long length of hose and pumped out first the cockpit locker then the engine bay, and finally the bilges. They were then sponged dry. Spurred on by relief we continued to restore the boat to normality, finally completing the task at 02:45

The engine had been switched off during the pump out of the engine bay. On restarting it, we realised that the steering had failed. We think this had happened when the steering had been briefly fouled by a can of diesel. We now needed to empty the aft cabin bunk again and then Steve and 2 spanners sorted the problem quite quickly restoring the links to the rudder quadrant.

Time for a hot chocolate and a chat. With hindsight we think the engine problem was caused by a ¼ ton of fresh water in the bilges, as when it was restarted we were back up to cruising revs. We are thankful it was freshwater and not a ruptured sea cock or hull breech. Even though we knew it was fresh water in the bilges, but not tank water, we went through the motions of checking sea cocks as good practice and elimination, in the hope that the real cause would become apparent which it did

Oh yes! When Steve was fixing the steering he found that the rudder stock appears to be leaking. May need a lift out somewhere. He assures me we will not sink!

Thank goodness for the oblivion of sleep.

So whilst we have dealt with a flood on board, it is not a tick box list of 3 and we shall be doing everything we can to prevent the other 2 items on the safety brief list from happening.

From the Captain: P.S. Found the hole in the gas locker, looks like at some time there was another pipe coming out of the top of the locker into the boat. Need to put in a bung or fill hole. It appears that the extremely very heavy rain over 2/3 days had been running into the gas locker from the deck, as it is designed to do, but due to the two gas connector washers tied together with a bit of string blocking the drain the water was exiting into the boat. This had built up in the cockpit locker until it reached a level where it started to flood the rest of the boat.

HAVE WE MENTIONED IT WAS RAINING REALLY , REALLY, REALLY HARD.

I have described the rainfall slightly differently in the log!!   Steve