I decided that I shouldn’t eat breakfast yet since I’ll be diving in about an hour, so I start to prepare for the dive and have a cup of tea. By 7:30 am the current is still moving pretty fast and I’m going to have to wait a little longer. Around 8:00 I move everything into the cockpit, tie a line to a floatation cushion and stream it behind the boat. Just then I see my brother coming into the anchorage, he’s early, I think he wants to make sure I don’t drown. We get his ‘flats boat’ (boat used in bone fishing) secured to Aine, he gets onboard and I go over the side. The current is still moving slightly and I make my first dive to locate the thru-hull intake fitting. The water is pitch black and I can’t even see my hand in front of my face, the sky is overcast and doesn’t add any light through the water… Oh, to be back in the Bahamas with its crystal-clear waters. Not being able to see the target will make this almost impossible, somehow I have to be lucky enough to be able to feel it, and go back to it blind, dive after dive. I have no diving flashlight and I give myself little chance of actually getting this done. I make a few more attempts and it becomes obvious that this isn’t going to work. I get back onboard, get into some dry clothes, and head out with my brother.
We get back to the boat ramp and haul the boat out of the water, as the trailer is being pulled up the ramp it starts to make a loud metal-on-metal sound, a sound that sends shivers up any boater’s spine, something is drastically wrong. We stop and look over the trailer, nothing looks out of place, with me outside, my brother pulls the trailer forward a ways… the metal grinding sound is gone. I hop in and we are off to his house, which is only 5 blocks away. As we pull down his street the sound returns, the truck stops and I get out and I have him pull forward, oh boy! The wheel is wobbling from side to side with little if anything holding it on the axle. We are not far from his house and get the trailer into the driveway without anything collapsing. We jack up the trailer and spin the wheel, and it falls off the axle, much better now than before. The only way to get back to Aine is to fix the trailer. Which is what we do for the rest of the day. Luckily I’ve replaced trailer wheel hubs before. Options for Aine now are to find a different way to clear the inlet, get towed again somewhere to be hauled out, or tied up for a diver.
I conceive of an idea to use compressed air to blow the obstruction out of the inlet. To do this I need to turn off the inlet thru-hull so the seawater doesn’t rush in and sink the boat, disconnect the hose, attach it to a source of compressed air, open the thru-hull and blow whatever is stuck in it out without destroying anything. If I could attach the dinghy/tender air pump to the hose I could manually blow out the obstruction under foot pressure. But I need an adapter to go from the 1 1/4” thin-walled tender inflation hose to the ¾” rubber inlet hose. I have nothing like that onboard. Off to a surplus marine consignment shop, where I find an elbow fitting that I think will work. Returning to the boat I make all the connections and lying on my side on the sole of the boat I’m holding this conglomeration together with only my hands, my brother stomps on the pump, but nothing, again I say, this time I hear a few bubbles from outside the hull, give it another forceful pump and woosh, bubbles galore, out goes whatever the obstruction was. Keep pumping, three more times to make sure the obstruction does not reattach. I reconnect everything like normal and start the engine, I check the water flow at the stern and watch the temperature gauge, everything is normal. I run the engine for about 10 minutes and all is well. OK, we are all set to start our trip back to North Carolina, but I do need to fill 3 or 4 diesel jerry cans. It is getting late in the day and to get the jerry cans filled and return it will surely be dark. I ask if I can spend the night at his house and leave early in the morning, and he says ‘sure’. We gather up the jerry cans, I get my laundry, and off we go.