Monthly Archives: September 2018

What’s That Sound?

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I didn’t know propane regulators could potentially sink your boat. Well, I suppose I probably would have realized they could if I stopped to think about it. I just never gave it much thought. Whenever I have to go into our propane locker, I usually give the solenoid a quick glance, make sure the locker drain is clear, and check the pressure on the gauge. But I never think much about the regulator itself.

So let’s back up a little. Rhonda and I have been retired for several years now, and our life generally moves at a leisurely pace. But this summer, we’ve taken a couple new to life afloat, Beth and Stephen on S/V Cattywampus, under our wings to help them develop their skills and confidence. The nice thing is that they’re pleasant people to hang with, and are eager to learn. Oh, and they give us beer, which is no small thing. The not so nice thing is that they both have full time, Monday thru Friday jobs. That means if we’re going to take them out and show them a thing or two, we’re back to having to cram everything into a Friday afternoon to Sunday window. That hasn’t been our modus operandi for quite a while here on the good ship Eagle Too. We’re much more likely to head to that one particular anchorage during the week when no one is there, and head back just when everyone starts showing up Friday evening. That’s just the way we roll.

Anyway, there we were preparing for a Friday afternoon departure from the marina, headed for our favorite anchorage at Pensacola Beach. The plan was to show the crew of Cattywampus the somewhat tricky entrance to Little Sabine Bay. Actually, it’s probably about a 2 on a 10 point scale of trickiness, but I know we were a little intimidated the first time we attempted it seven or eight years ago, so it’s nice to have someone to follow in your first time.

We were almost finished with our underway preps and about to start unplugging shore power and start the engine. As I headed up the ladder to the cockpit, I suddenly thought I heard a new and unusual sound. A hissing sound that I couldn’t immediately locate and isolate. Was it us? Was it someone else? It wasn’t there just a few minutes ago when I went below to flip on our instruments. But it was definitely there now. And then I smelled it. The distinctive and pungent odor of propane. We keep our small green 1 pound propane bottle that we use for our barbecue grill in the stern propane locker where our big 10 pound tanks live. My first thought was that maybe it started leaking? I know those little green bottles aren’t the most reliable things.

I climbed onto our stern and  popped open the lid to the locker. I found the source of the hissing sound. It was the regulator. A jet of gas was shooting out a tiny hole in its side. I lifted the tank with regulator attached to look closer. The hole the propane was leaking from was labeled “vent.” Suddenly it all became clear. The diaphragm in the regulator had ruptured. Propane at 150 PSI was blowing out the regulator vent into our locker. No warning or indication. Everything was working fine and then it just apparently blew.

So why did I say that this could have sank the boat? Because while the propane locker lid closes with a gasket and vents out the bottom to the outside of the boat, it was designed to control and contain the type of low pressure, gradual leak you get when a fitting is a little lose or a gas line develops a small crack. But what we had here was the full 150 PSI gas pressure of the 10 lb propane bottle blowing out the regulator vent, leaking right past the locker lid gasket and enveloping the stern of Eagle Too in a cloud of propane. One errant spark could have produced a fireball, the likes of which would have been detrimental both to Eagle Too’s stern, and me standing there in the middle of it.

Some thoughts: How lucky we were that we just happened to catch it as it started. It wasn’t leaking, I went below for a few minutes, and then when I went back up topside, it was. If it had happened in the middle of the night, or while we were away from the boat, the entire tank would have vented. Maybe things would have still turned out OK, but I’m glad we didn’t have to find out. Also, I’m glad it happened here, where we have easy access to West Marine to pick up a replacement. If this had happened down in the islands somewhere, there’s no telling how long we might have wandered around without the ability to use our stove or oven, looking for a replacement regulator.

As it was, I was able to borrow Stephen’s car, pop up to West Marine, grab the only regulator they had in stock, rush back to the boat, and swap out the bad one for the new one. I even had a roll of the special purpose yellow Teflon tape onboard that’s safe for use in gas and fuel systems. Never use the white Teflon tape for gas and fuel lines, only the petroleum approved yellow stuff.

An hour later, we were on our way, with no harm done (except to our bank account) and a good story to tell. We even still managed to get anchored down before sunset. But tell me, does anyone think to carry a spare propane regulator onboard? We certainly never have. We carry one for the grill, but not for the main gas system.

So if you’re a cruiser, and your boat is approaching early middle age like ours, you might just want to think about adding an extra regulator to your list of onboard spares. Or potentially spend time eating cold Beanie Weenies while trying to source a new one down in the islands.

Workups and Breakdowns

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It’s the peak of hurricane season, but November is only six weeks away. That means it’s time for us to start waking Eagle Too up from her lazy summer slumber and start exercising systems and gear to make sure we’re ready for our next cruising season.

In the Navy, a ship and crew preparing for deployment go through a series of increasingly complex exercises called workups. The purpose is to get the crew out of their casual in-port mindset and once again thinking and acting like sailors, as well as testing the ship’s systems to verify that it’s ready for an extended voyage. This past weekend, we got underway for the first time since mid-July to begin our own workup. The plan was to spend four nights at anchor in Little Sabine Bay at Pensacola Beach in order to attend the annual Taste of the Beach culinary event. The plan didn’t include soul crushing, energy sapping heat. But that’s what we got anyway. Four days of temperatures in the mid-90’s with humidity that pushed the heat index above 110 degrees.

It was not a fun four days. The crew of Eagle Too was sweaty, tired and cranky. But we stuck it out in order to give everything onboard a thorough checkout.

The verdict is that we’re not quite ready for sea. While most everything onboard did fine, it looks like our 42 month old house battery bank is on its last legs. Bus voltage was just too low for the number of amp hours expended. And our usually trusty outboard gave us fits. Even though I’ve run it regularly to keep the carburetor clean, it apparently suffered heat stroke and quit running, causing us to have to resort to rowing at one point. Ah, outboards. They truly are moody beasts. I mean, they’re really no more complex than your garden variety lawnmower. But they seem to be 10 times more temperamental.

Back in our slip, plugged into shore power with the air conditioning blasting away, we started working though the issues we discovered. We may have solved our outboard problem. It seems like it was a stuck float valve that eventually worked itself free. But we’ll have to test the house battery bank again at anchor for a few days to see if the equalizer charge we performed upon returning from the beach has jolted them back to life. I’m only mildly optimistic. Personally, it makes more sense to suck it up and replace the batteries while we’re here in the US where it’s easy and fairly cheap. If we try to make them last one more season and they end up expiring while we’re somewhere south of somewhere, we’ve learned it can be a long, long way to someplace that sells batteries, and they’ll be priced like they’re made of gold with diamond and emerald accents.

Eagle Too anchored in Little Sabine Bay, Pensacola Beach, Florida taken by Annie Dike from www.HaveWindWillTravel.com

Ditch Sense

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I was going to call this post “Bitchin’ Ditching,” but with four active tropical systems in the Atlantic right now, I just couldn’t make light of what really is a serious subject.

Like many (hopefully all) cruisers, we carry a ditch bag with some essential stuff in it that we think we might need if we ever have to abandon ship. And like many (hopefully NOT all) cruisers, we’ve probably overlooked a bunch of things that we’d need in an actual emergency. We’re working on that, trying to add some things to make the bag more useful. But one thing I know we didn’t have right was its location. Our ditch bag lived on the back corner of a shelf in our aft cabin—a spot that would have required one of us to crawl back on our hands and knees and move other things to reach it in an emergency.

And then I saw a picture of someone else’s ditch bag. It was under their companionway ladder. It was a palm-smack-in-the-middle-of-the-forehead moment. So guess where the new home for our ditch bag is.

To be fair, we’d already been living on the boat for a year before we bought our bag, and this area had already become home to some other items. Since our ditch bag was something we hoped we’d never need, it seemed OK to stick it in an out of the way spot. But now that we’ve been cruising for three seasons and have several OMG weather experiences under our belts (or under our inflatable life jackets, I should say), the need to be able to grab-n-go in a crisis has moved up the priority list considerably.

Another thing I like about this spot is that if we ever end up being boarded by the Coast Guard for a safety inspection, our emergency strobe and distress day signal are easy to reach.

If you’ve been along for the ride long enough, you may remember we wrote in the post Overcoming Tyranny about how we hate being held hostage to arbitrary expiration dates and thus don’t depend on flares to meet our USCG emergency signaling requirements.

Space blankets, a sharp knife, some sturdy shears, a day’s worth of bottled water, some energy bars, copies of our USCG documentation, insurance and passports, a bright flashlight—just a few of the items in our bag or on the list to be added before we head out again this fall. So what’s in your ditch bag? And more importantly, where do you keep it?

Hope That Checked the Box

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We spent last weekend watching the progress of Tropical Storm Gordon. The projected track took it far enough to our west for it to be of just minor concern. When the marina staff went home for the long Labor Day weekend without even mentioning it, we thought we were home free. They issue a mandatory evacuation of the marina if tropical storm force winds are expected, and since no one seemed concerned, neither were we. Naturally we did the normal storm prep for gusty winds, like taking all the loose deck gear down below, strapping down the dinghy and rigging some extra lines and fenders. But we didn’t strip the sails or any of our canvas, like our dodger and bimini. We told dockmates who’d never been through a tropical storm not to worry as it just wasn’t going to be that bad.

Prepped and waiting

The Tuesday that Gordon paid us a visit started out about like we expected. By mid-afternoon things had turned quite blustery, and we were telling friends that this was probably as bad as it was going to get. In early evening, the boat was still calm enough that Rhonda was able to whip up a sumptuous and hearty meal.

Pork chops in orange sauce over jasmine rice and green beans with bacon

But Gordon had a few tricks up his sleeve. As darkness fell, the storm intensified to almost hurricane strength and veered more to the north, bringing it much closer than expected. By midnight things were pretty intense, with howling winds gusting to 55 mph pushing Eagle Too hard against the pier and creating a 20 to 30 degree heel.

I don’t know why storms always come ashore in the middle of the night. It sure seems though that every time we get hit by tropical weather, the worst occurs in the early AM, and Gordon was no exception. At one point, as the winds peaked and rain poured down and tornado alerts began alarming on our phones, we started gathering up some essentials in a ditch bag in case we needed to leave the boat to seek shelter in the marina laundry room. But just when it started feeling like leaving made more sense than staying, things finally started easing up. By 1AM we were able to walk the dock with a flashlight to check our lines and look in on our neighbors who were also riding out the storm onboard their boat. By 2AM we were able to climb into bed for some much needed sleep. By later that morning, it was back to being just another blustery day.

We never lost power, and fortunately there was very little lightning, for which we were grateful. We had surprisingly few rain leaks, as the recent work I’ve been doing replacing most of our old, leaky ports paid off. I suppose if we had known exactly how strong Gordon would become, we would have probably buttoned up the boat and headed inland to stay with family. But as we often say, if the experience was frightening but nothing got broken and no one got hurt, then it just means that in the end, we had an adventure resulting in a good story to tell. And adventure is the purpose of a Life On The Hook™, afterall.

One last thought. The night before Gordon hit, this was the wrapper from my nightly Dove chocolate (a tradition here on Eagle Too).

We held onto that little scrap of foil until the day after the storm, when we saw this…

We were having a stress relieving day-after dinner with Beth and Stephan from S/V Cattywampus to celebrate our surviving Tropical Storm Gordon when this rainbow appeared, arcing high over downtown. We’re hoping it’s a sign that with Gordon behind us, we can check that box for the year and not have to worry about storms again until next season!