This is the topic of our “to be continued” in our last post. One night we noticed the bilge pump running and when we investigated we found a trickle of water coming from one of the valves we use for dumping holding tanks. Since we are planning on being off-shore we consider this a big deal. The fitting in question was a 2 inch valve and the trickle was coming from the seawater side of the valve so a failure could have been catastrophic. The other problem is that to fix it we needed to haul the boat out. The boat yard here is VERY busy and we had to use connections and favors to get the work done. Island Summers is pictured on a 100 ton lift which made her look pretty small. The Abaroa boat yard pulled her out at 5:00pm on Monday and we put her back in the next morning with two new thru-hulls and valves. That’s a pretty impressive turn-around. We can’t thank them enough for the emergency slot in a schedule that is full through April.
The most stressful part of this whole fix was waiting for almost 2 weeks for yard space to clear up. Every boat has issues when it’s in the yard and we were waiting our turn but I certainly worried I was hanging around too much asking what day we’d be able to get hauled out. While waiting, Kevin had to dive under the boat and put a foam plug in the thru-hull in the event the leak got worse and the bilge pump was unable to keep up.
After we got back to the dock this morning we spent the rest of the day cleaning up from our months of projects here in La Paz. Finally, we’re ready to cross the Sea of Cortez to the land of jungles and iguanas.
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