9/16/26: Bird Island: No Birds
Sep 24
2 min read
We got up early this morning to say goodbye to Tyler, Candy, and Marc as they had an early ferry ride out of Harrington. Their time on the boat was brief but very enjoyable, so they'll all be missed. After saying goodbye, we really didn't have much to do. The wind forecast for today was for strong wind from the direction we wanted to go, and good wind tomorrow, so made the most sense to wait to leave until tomorrow. However restlessness quickly kicked and as we all puttered around looking for jobs, Katie took to the charts and found a small island bird sanctuary just 10 miles away in the direction of our travels. After some convincing of me by the crew, we finally filled up on diesel, with a pump instead of jerrycans for once, and set off.
We got off to a nice, relaxed start tacking our way upwind, but as the wind grew, things got less comfortable. It also became apparent that if we kept sailing upwind we'd get to the island after dark, so we turned on the engine. This was the real problem.
We've been having issues with the engine circulating seawater all trip, the issue being that after not running the engine for a few hours of sailing, the saltwater intake would lose its prime and the engine would overheat unless you reprimed it with buckets of saltwater. This is the problem we had this time as well, but when we went to reprime the saltwater intake, it still wasn't flowing the right amount of water. It was just enough for us to get the boat into our anchorage, but it was clear it was time to find the real problem.
The anchorage was rocky, and it took a bit to get the anchor to catch, but we did so under a beautiful sunset, so there were no complaints. Once anchored, we had a well-earned dinner and then set about chasing through all the boat's seawater piping. Nathan and I checked everything but the through-hull fitting, which would have required diving, and found no glaring issues other than the lift pump seemed weak. We checked the impeller on the pump but it looked fine so we figured that wasn't it. We put everything back together, doublechecking all the fittings, and crossed our fingers that we had chased out our gremlins.
Comments