Back To Black

As we approach the Blacking Season you may find this tale a useful reminder of getting your coverage (like the famous lager advert) into the places others fail to reach.

“GETTING A SINKING FEELING” 

In the everlasting debate on the merits of bowthrusters I thought the following cautionary tale might be of interest to Canal Boat readers.

We were away for a short, late February cruise, just a few days away, a bit of a quiet potter. One of my tasks on these cold mornings is to rise early and light the fire and set the water heater in action so that the captain (she who must be obeyed) can emerge to a warm boaty breakfast after having had her wake up shower.

On this particular Friday morning I lifted the engine room floor hatch to access the regulator and fuel isolator to light the heater and on doing this discovered about four inches of water swishing around our bilges.

Thankfully I had a spare bilge pump in a useful spare things cupboard and after a very short while I was able to “jury rig” a pump to start to get rid of the water. Having attended to the immediate inundation I then did the usual checks to see where this water was coming form.

First check what type of water is it. Is it fresh domestic water resulting from a split pipe or a burst tank. Well no it wasn’t that, the tank was still full. Has it got antifreeze in it? If so it would indicate a coolant leak. No, there was no antifreeze in it and both engine and heating header tanks were still at the right level. Did it look like canal water? Yes it did, remember at this point the immortal wartime words Keep Calm and Carry On. I did.

WHERE WAS IT COMING FROM?

A check of the stern gland showed it to be as dry as snuff so that wasn’t the answer.

By this time the pump had removed the majority of the influx, so we sat down to have breakfast and a think. After breakfast it was plain to see that we were still slowly taking on water. We came to the only conclusion that we could... we had a leak in the hull.