That heartsink moment

It is 0200 on Friday morning. I am standing in the engine bay of one of my boats; I am cold and wet despite my drysuit. I am exhausted physically and emotionally and know that I still have several more hours of work ahead of me before I can find my bed. However finally I am no longer waist deep in water. Then it starts to rain!

No, this is not the start of a film I have just seen. This was my world on Friday night. Sue who was on lates (the one who does the rounds to make sure everything is ok) woke me up at midnight telling me that there was something wrong with one of my boats. We went back down to the jetty and she was very low in the water. There was at least one alarm going off in her and I wasn’t sure what was happening. I opened the engine bays and my heart dropped like a stone into my boots. The engines were covered in water, covered! If they weren’t bolted down they would have been swimming.

1m³ of sea water weighs about 1 metric ton. The engine bay has space for about 2.5m³ of seawater. I immediately sent Sue to wake Erny (the mechanic and Rod, the BC) and got into my dry suit. I found a bucket and started bailing. Erny arrived and we started to pump the water out. After what seemed like forever (but was in fact only about 45 mins of me bailing furiously before the pump started pulling water) we started winning and I found that the water intake pipe on the seawater pump (which drives the water round the engines to cool them) had popped off. Erny and I had been working on the seawater pump and I obviously hadn’t made properly sure the pipe was on so when we tested it, it must have popped off and we didn’t notice. We reattached it and drained the boat. Then we started the real work. Just a hint: diesel engines don’t like swimming. We found that water had got in everywhere. Not just water, salt water. We worked furiously to drain the water and contaminated oil from the sump and put new oil back in. The engine takes 12l of oil. We drained 30l of water and oil from a single engine. I kept willing it to be a nightmare and to be able to wake up in my own bed but unfortunately that didn’t happen. We finally gave up trying to start the engines at 0400 when we discovered that there was not enough power in the batteries.

Friday morning heralded the arrival of HMS Richmond. I then spent the next two days helping her boat to ferry 80 naval personnel ashore each day. Every break I got I was back in the engine bay with Erny and Joe the sparky. While working like a demon I was luckily able to enjoy the naval visit. Hazel and I were invited to Carse House by Pat and Sarah to have dinner with 5 people from the ship and on Saturday night we were invited aboard for ‘penguin racing’ - horse racing but with penguins. It was a fun night and a fun visit and they are back at the end of October so hopefully we will be able to do more with them and I won’t have this engine looming over me.

I was meant to be going on holiday to Sorling with Jo and Hazel this week but that was not to be. Today I dropped them off in the most glorious weather we have seen in a while and returned to my poor engines. I hope they have the most wonderful time. If the weather stays as it is forecast they should have.

We have had to change both alternators, both starter motors; take out and check the injectors on each engine, check the valve clearances and tomorrow we will be checking the timing belt. It has taken 5 days and we just put them into gear at 1600 today. The worry is that if we get them up to power and something seizes they could explode, either inside or more dramatically. We are doing everything in our power to stop that from happening.

On a more cheerful note: Elephant seals have started coming onto our beach. We have had two births and are expecting many more from the very pregnant females lounging around. The males are beginning to get a bit antsy and we are all waiting for the first ‘flipper of love’ moment.

Last weekend was the last of the winter. This week will see the return of the builders to the island. I am looking forward to it and am hoping that I will be out of the engine bay by the time they arrive. Wish us luck.