Yachting and Boating World forums: An eventful trip

Our plans to visit Byron started well, left Sunbury at 11:15 on Saturday to head for Widsor, with the intention of moving further upstream on Monday. River was pretty empty, almost worryingly so for a BH weekend. Yellow boards on Sunbury and Shepperton but none thereafter.

Popped into Shepperton for some fuel and a pump out followed by a lazy and peaceful potter upstream in bright sunshine. Just after Bell Weir I fancied a cup of coffee and ambled down to the galley. The carpet was damp in a big patch near the sink and my 6 year old instantly denied spilling anything. As I looked I saw water coming up from under the deck boards, lifted one and found the bilges full. Hit all three bilge pumps to get the water out and checked the enginebay. 18" of water there, spray from the shafts washing it about and my first thoughts were either that we had lost a shaft seal, or a hose/skin fitting had failed. I checked all the skin fittings for engines and head, groping through the water. Nothing found. As the pumps got hold of the situation and the engine bay emptied I still could not see the problem. There seemed more water round the port engine so I shut that one down and pressed on to Windsor.

On arrival, no messing looking for a spot, it was too empty, straight in by the Leisure centre and get beck down to the engines. I noted that everywhere was now pretty dry barring under the port engine so there lay the proble. Fired it up again and watched a half inch or so thick jet of water coming out of the exhaust manifold cooler. A core plug or drain plug had gone. Checking more closely I think a core plug, corrosion. Nowt more to do for the evening so a decent meal, decent bottle of Rioja and then several G&Ts and a cigar or two.

Sunday. Where in Windsor does one find anything that might plug a hole in metal. Easily available would be expensive cigars, perfume and handbags, but none appealed as a solution. Fortunately a local suggested that Windsor had lowered itself to a Robert Dyas and plumbers putty seemed to do the job on testing. Even the carpets were drying in the sun. Job done, or at least on a get home basis. A friend has offered to weld the cooler up for a bottle of his favourite, all I need to do is get it out, and back in again!

Not being certain how good a job I had done we made the decision to abandon Ashmount and return to Sunbury. Running back home, just through Romney Lock and port oil temp dropped to 20psi and the temperature jumped to 90deg, shut down and opened the hatch, hot impeller housing and no cooling so that's gone. No idea why as yet. Could have been something over the inlet, something in the system from the repair or just misfortune. Not worth sticking a new impeller in en route until I knew what was wrong and to do a full check of port requires the bridge steps to come out so home on one most of the time, running both for control in the locks and watching the temp carefully. At least no water seemed to have come in.

Ah well, that's boating:-)

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Two beers please, my friend is paying.