Day 9 - By Vicki

I slept in until 11am, and made it to my 12 pm yoga class.  It was so nice to relax!  I took a long, hot shower in their spa, did my hair and makeup, and came back to the boat to get ready for a nice night on the town. 

I noticed water in the boat's bathroom.

When I went into the bathroom, I noticed there was a lot of water on the floor.  I tried cleaning it up, but water kept flowing in.  I couldn’t understand it.   I called Aaron who was across the street at the hotel, and he said he’d be right there.  He thought maybe I left the switch on the toilet the wrong way.  He's always warning me that if I leave the toilet switch to the left it could sink the boat.  I'm sure he thought that's what I  had done.

 As soon as Aaron got back to the boat he said, “The boat is sinking!”  He tried to pump the water out of the engine compartment with the bilge pump, but it wasn’t working.  I thought it was my fault until he told me the bilge wasn't pumping.  We decided to grab the bucket and start to bail.  After we got down the water a little bit, Aaron ran over to the dockmaster and told him the problem.  The dockmaster obviously didn’t want a sunken boat in his marina and got somebody over to our boat within minutes. 

The guy they sent was at least able to get the manual bilge pump to work, but he said we also have a leak in the shaft seal and water is rushing into the engine compartment.  He informed us that he couldn’t help us any more until tomorrow, and he wasn’t’ sure what time since he had other appointments.  We would have to run the manual bilge at least every hour, so that means no sleep for us.  He said fixing the bilge was a small job, but he wasn't sure when he could make time for it. 

We were actively freaking out, and when suddenly an angle appeared at our door.  Well, maybe not an angle, but just as good.  It was a mechanic named Mike Russel who wanted to fix our leaking shaft seal.  He has a sailboat on the other side of The Pier and someone called him and told him we might need some help.  He will return first thing in the morning to fix the bilge pump.   If you need a good mechanic in St Pete his number is (727) 612-1425.  Mike was able to tighted up the shaft seal enough to stop the leak.  He's a hell of a nice guy.  I just checked the engine compartment and it is almost completely dry even without the bilge pump working. 

Remember how Aaron said I was bringing everything from the house?  The bucket was one of the items I wanted to bring that he said we didn’t have room for.  Aaron said, “Why do we need a bucket?”   I said, “In case we need to bail.”   Aaron said, “We won’t have to bail!”   I told him about the time that I went out on a two man sailboat with my dad and my friend Ann on a windy day and we had to bail without a bucket.   The sailboat turned into a bathtub and we cupped our hands together and used a sponge to try to bail the water out.  Somehow we were able to get enough water out to get back to shore.    Maybe I didn’t bring too much stuff after all. 

Aaron thinks maybe we are cursed by the blog.  The blog needs adventure, problems, twists and turns to make it a good read.  Unfortunately this is all real.  You can’t even make this stuff up. 

Even our food storage area is flooded. 

Just when we thought our boat was dry, Aaron went to our middle storage to get a case of water and discovered that is flooded as well.  So we bailed some more. 

Do you remember I said that our friends had bets on us that we would only last two to ten days?  Well, today is day nine.  I can’t wait what tests are in store for us tommorow.  If we can make it through tomorrow, all bets are off, and I believe the rest will be smooth sailing.