Today was a boatkeeping day. It hasn't rained nor is the wind blowing but still I could not talk Mandy into going up the mast (and in truth, we had such a huge breakfast today that I wasn't looking forward to having to hoist her up there!) so I focused on internal matters.
I checked and topped off the house bank of batteries, both of which seem to be doing all right. After some corrosion problems last year, I was happy to find them nearly spotless now, and I hit them with some more protectant to keep them that way. Since we'll be aboard all winter it probably won't be an issue anyway, since they will be used regularly and we'll have the whole boat warm and dry.
I checked the bilge and found more water in there than I had expected. Since it hadn't been getting much water in it while it was unoccupied earlier in the summer, I tend to want to blame a leaking plug from the icebox drain. Still, it had something that looked a bit like oil in it. I dripped some detergent in it and it didn't cause the usual bomb-burst in the sheen, so it could also just be regular black slime of some sort. But that got me to checking the engine compartment as well.
The last couple times I have checked the transmission fluid, it has been low, despite my having topped it up the previous time. So I wondered if I had a leak there somewhere. It was impossible to rule out completely, but I felt around the housing as best I could, and stuck a paper towel in the spots I couldn't reach, and could not find any fluid. The engine drip pan is beneath most of the housing anyway, so drips should end up there and not in the bilge, but the housing does slope to the stern so it's conceivable that a slow drip could ooze back along the prop shaft and drain into the bilge. Certainly the area under the shaft was slimy and greasy. But the shaft itself didn't have any signs of drips under it. I also wonder if maybe when I have topped the fluid off if I have just been hasty taking my measurements... the manual says to wait five minutes for the fluid to settle, but I haven't always. Maybe it is just settling after I measured. So today, I made sure to wait before satisfying myself that it was topped off. We'll wait a week and see if it stays that way.
Anyway, I went back and started the engine up to see if it was maybe spraying oil off under power, or if putting it in gear caused a drip. As she fired up, I happened to look down at the binnacle, and think I spotted the problem: our compass no longer has any liquid in it!
In order for the compass card to spin freely, it usually floats in a sea of mineral oil. As you can see, ours no longer does. So that could well explain the oily sheen in the bilge water (although not really the blackness; but that could still just be regular slime).
I stuck my head in the cockpit locker with a flashlight to see if I could see any drips from below the binnacle housing, but it was just too bright out to spot anything minor like that. I could tell, with much gratification, that the rudder post step is bone dry, so the packing seems to be holding.
We're planning to sail to Port Hadlock next weekend, and between our various GPS units and spare compasses I think we can manage it, but after that I'll have to pull the compass and take it in to see what's up. I'm hoping it's just a leaky seal somewhere rather than a cracked housing.
Having developed a satisfying hypothesis for that mystery, then, we set about fixing the drip still remaining from the head outflow connection. I had to rouse Mandy for that, because my hands aren't small enough to reach. It's hard to imagine how the manufacturer could have positioned this to be any more difficult to reach, since it is at the rear of the toilet at the base... that's an area almost inaccessible by definition. To make matters worse, it is also inside the toilet skirt, which is not removeable. So you have to reach in from the front, and around, to get to the hose clamp. And since it's inside the skirt, there is almost no room for tools.
I ended up holding up the head as much as I could with the hose still connected (as it must be, when one wishes to tighten the hose clamp) while Mandy reached underneath to tighten it. After about three tries, it stopped dripping... or at least it has not dripped in the past hour. I am not prepared to declare total victory, but surely we have struck it a grievous blow. Still, manhandling the whole apparatus back into place and securing it to the base again (which must be done from underneath; don't ask how) is not a gentle process and it is easy to imagine all our careful work undone by a wrong twist or an over-tightened bolt somewhere along the way. Anyway; we charged it back up again and will see how it looks in the morning. Even then, a leak may not be obvious, as once the thing is all secured there is no way at all to see what is happening under the skirt in the rear. Ultimately, we may not know for sure until it has again been used in anger and we detect the telltale aroma of sewage seeping outside the sewage system.
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