I’m up at dawn, but people are living in the houseboats on this dock and I’ve got to wait until at least 9:00 am before firing up the engine. So, I sit contemplating all the ways this could fail, all the things I need to watch, and how long it has to work at the dock before I declare it fixed. The time goes slowly, but exactly at 9:00 am I start up the engine, it isn’t as loud as before, I go below and observe my creation and it is holding together. It looks like something from the Outer Limits, it pulses with each exhaust cycle, and it looks alive as if it’s breathing. The bladder expands to 3 or 4 times its size and makes a ball in the center of the flex hose, which pulses with each breath. I give it some time at idle and the flex hose in the elbow slides off. I shut it down and put the hose back on and clamp it extra tight and restart the engine. I let it idle for a while and it holds together, I rev the engine from the engine room and it breathes faster, pulsing, but it still holds together. Time to throw off some lines and see what it does under regular load. I’m off the dock and motoring toward downtown Wilmington, I’m feeling pretty good about my solution, it’s scary to look at, but it’s working. Ten minutes go by, and I go below to observe my creation in action, it looks fragile from a marine perspective, there it is pulsing away at 1200 RPM. I start to see some water coming from around the clamp on the pipe. I grab a screwdriver and tighten it up, but it’s still leaking, slower, but still leaking. I don’t think this is sustainable, I turn around and head back to the Marina… In my head, I’m already working on plan B.
Back in my slip, I disassemble the ‘fix’, it was only a matter of time before it completely failed. When I take it apart, the flex hose was melting from the inside out, in places it had turned liquid. The exhaust repair tape also melted and started to come apart. I conclude that we have to minimize the use of flexible things and get a nice rigid mechanical bite. Plan B: get a small pipe nibble and thread it into the elbow, and mate it up with the pipe in the exhaust flange, they will both be the same diameter, and then clamp-em… 2 clamps above the joint and 2 clamps below. I remove the elbow and start to try to take out the broken-off pipe pieces. The pipe was so corroded that all there are is thin strips of metal in the threads, but the deeper into the elbow I go the thicker the pipe pieces become. There is no way to grab the inside of the pipe to remove it, all I can do is use a hammer and chisel and take out what I can from the threads. I know that I need the new pipe nibble to capture at least 3 or 4 full threads to be strong enough. The pieces being chiseled out get smaller and smaller the deeper I go, it takes me 3 ½ hours to get enough crap out of the threads to give this a proper try. By 1:00, Uber and I are off to Home Depot, years ago they threaded black iron pipe in the store. I get to Home Depot and walk into the plumbing department, but I don’t see the threading machine, I find a salesman and he tells me that they did away with that service about 5 years ago. Of course, they did, who would need it today?
I find 1 ¼” black pipe and buy a 6” pipe nibble, I go to the electrical department and find a 1” all metal conduit coupling, I go to the roofing department and purchase some 60 thousand aluminum flashing, I go to the tool department and buy a table vise. I walk to the Advance Auto Parts next door, I buy high-temperature RTV gasket material, I buy some exhaust repair tape, and high-temperature fiberglass insulation wrapping. I call Uber and I’m back on the boat by 12:30 and I start implementing Plan B. I clamp the vise on the companionway ladder, put the pipe in, and cut half of it off, next I test thread the nipple into the elbow and I don’t have enough threads. Back to the hammer and chisel, removing more of the old pipe. This takes another hour and a half to get the 4 threads I wanted. I put the elbow in the vise and thread in the nipple. Now I reassemble the exhaust system, wrap both pipes with the exhaust repair tape, take a piece of the aluminum flashing, cut it to size, and wrap it around the joint clamping it, two above and two below. I am pretty confident in this repair and so I wrap the entire repair area with the high-temperature fiberglass wrap. It’s about 5:00 pm now, I start up the engine, and the repair is perfect, no pulses, and it holds together. I look and if I leave now, I can make Carolina Beach before dark, I go to the cockpit and notice that the depth finder says 0.00… seriously? I get off the boat and push it from the dock to see if it’s still floating, and… it’s not. The boat is sitting hard on the bottom, and I’m not going anywhere. Crap and double crap! First thing in the morning then… my God will this never end?