We left West End on Super Tuesday, sailing for Mangrove Cay, some thirty miles away. For part of the trip the wind was dead ahead of us, on the nose, so we had to start the engine and motorsail into a choppy sea. At last, we got to Mangrove and while tidying up the boat, we noticed some water in the bilge. Not a lot, but enough to let us know something was amiss.
We had already replaced the hose and leaky hoseclamp, now what? Peter opened up the engine compartment and did a little investigating. It didn't take long to discover that the water pump on the engine was leaking. We checked our spares kit and discovered that we had a part that might fix the problem. We decided to sail the next day up to Great Sale Cay and anchor in the lee where Peter would attempt to remove and repair the water pump. Meanwhile, we turned on the XM radio and listened to early election results. As we went to bed that night Peter turned to me and said, "Well, it's always something!" Luckily we had a fair wind for the next leg of the trip and were able to sail all the way. When we had anchored north of Great Sale, Peter removed the water pump and pulled it apart. He replaced the defective part, a seal, and cleaned up the pump before bolting it back in place. Once all was back together, we crossed our fingers and fired up the diesel. Yay, it's not leaking! We still plan to replace the pump while we are here, because we really have no idea whether it will last for ten hours or 100 hours of motoring. But for now we are back in business.
The weather has been beautiful and the night sky is filled with millions of brilliant stars. Only one other boat is sailing our course with us, some folks from Oregon.
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