Morning
Saturday was slow, but today is an even slower Sunday. There’s not a hint of wind and still a bit of swell, but much less than in days past. Last night on my return dinghy ride the propellor started cavitating or getting surface air while at speed. I’m not sure what could have caused that. Perhaps the dinghy bottom is dirty, I’ll add a bottom cleaning session to my list of things to do. Fortunately, the dinghy is small and isn’t as fouled as the bottom on Zanshin.
There is a very slow saltwater leak into the bilge, coming in through a limber hole on the port side. I checked all of the through-hulls and seacocks and couldn’t locate the leak. The manual doesn’t show all the through-hulls. So I went swimming yesterday to see if I’d missed any holes in the hull. Nothing found that wasn’t already accounted for. But while diagnosing the problem this morning I found some water sloshing about in the compartment just forward of the engine. This might be the source. I poured in some Fabuloso cleaner and in a couple of hours I’ll look into the bilge to see if that water now has some of that powerful cleaner smell.
I’ve got the fan running at the workstation to cool me off. Without wind the Caribbean sun burns down and heats up everything, and it is only 10AM.
Afternoon
I’m not doing much on this even slower Sunday. I vacuumed out several liters of water from the engine area and didn’t do much else. I’m debating taking a nap topsides after a swim to cool down.
The water didn’t come back into the compartment, so it is either a sweetwater leak or a saltwater one from the engine cooling intake. I’m not going to do the taste-test, though; there’s too much gunk and cleaning fluid down there.
Happy Hour and dinner
I hadn’t thawed out any food for dinner, so I took the dinghy across to the dock close to Buccaneer’s Beach Bar. I had the same cavitation issue again but this time I stopped to try to figure out the cause. Analyzing the engine after stopping it. lifting it out and removing some Sargassum from the shaft showed nothing. So I put the engine back down and fired it up. Zipping on towards the beach I went through another patch of sargassum and soon thereafter the engine started acting up again. Looking down at the outboard, I saw another blob of Sargassum on the shaft and had an “aha” moment. Removing that solved the cavitation. It would seem that the Sargassum on the shaft causes the water flow to change enough so that air is introduced down the shaft and to the propeller, causing loss of lift.
Although it wasn’t busy at the beach bar, it took a long time to get my happy-hour Caribe, for which the bartender apologized. Despite the delays, I risked ordering a pizza and that arrived very quickly. It was too much for me and I gave some pieces to some freshly arrived sailors next to me.
They were here as paid crew on boats racing in the upcoming St. Barths Bucket Regatta. I had hoped to hear that they might be looking for unpaid “rail meat” but, as expected, that was not the case.