When a little bad news is pretty good news.

With heat indexes in the 110+ range, two days of thunderstorms in the forecast, short on sleep and even shorter of temper, (that would be just me, by the way) a slight change in plans seemed appropriate. So this afternoon we moved First Light off the free dock and back down the river a couple of hundred yards into a transient slip at the Ocean Yacht Marina. There I made my second successful back-into-the-slip landing. The first order of business after setting lines and fenders was getting the AC running. It took a while as, once again, the inlet was blocked. Not jellyfish this time. Seriously stinky mud that had to come from the Swamp was the culprit. With the aft engine room hatch open to facilitate that repair, Deb noticed a trail of salt water from the aft of the boat down into the port side shaft seal pocket. An observation that did nothing to lengthen my aforementioned short temper. One problem at a time please. Let's get the AC running, then figure out if the boat is sinking. Deb then had a short wrestle since the AC strainer leaked the first time we cranked up the pump. With the strainer leak fixed, the AC went to work on the hot, muggy air in the boat. We went to work tracing down the leak around the shaft seal.

The water under the shaft seal appeared to have its headwater around the starboard side rudder post. I dried it off and watched while Deb worked the rudders stop to stop. No more water. We went about cleaning everything up, finishing about the time the diver showed. We explained the bump and the vibration. My thought was that a) the rudder took a jolt that unseated its shaft seal for a bit, allowing a good squirt of water ingress and b) the jolt also left us with a bent prop tip. All just a guess of course, but that seemed the most likely explanation for what we had felt during and after the event. And, as it turned out, that is exactly what the diver found. No damage to the rudder and a bent prop tip. A little bit of bad news that is pretty good news.

The diver offered that he knew a guy that could pull the prop, have it repaired, and put it back on without lifting the boat out of the water. The whole process would take “just a couple of days”. Not saying that I didn't believe that but, well, I didn't. The boat is not hurt. A slightly bent prop tip isn't going to do much except save us some gas by having us slow down. The boat is already scheduled to come out of the water for the winter around Oct 1st. So we intend to drive on. But first I'm going to catch up on sleep, food, and music playing while waiting out a couple of days of storms.