Following a very pleasant week in Charleston SC we hopped back onto the ocean and turned north to the Cape Fear Inlet.

Once offshore we discovered that we were taking on a significant amount of water and it was above the floorboards. Needless to say we were concerned. Rightfully so. Turns out our water pump was leaking probably about a gallon of water every half an hour. So we turned off the engine for most of the trip but needed to do a several hour run against the current so eventually we needed to turn the engine back on and just endure the water and trust in the bilge pump.

The bilge pump turned on every 20-30 minutes to drain the bilge and worked like a champ. But of course we ended up going much slower than we had planned and missed our sunrise incoming tide to help us up the river and ended up with a 5 knot current against us at the inlet and a 4 knot current against us for most of the way from the inlet to Carolina Beach. Slow going and for a significant part of it we unfurled the headsail to get some extra speed.

All the time with the bilge pump turning on every half and hour or so. Reminding me that we had a potentially catastrophic engine issue.

Seven hours after turning the engine back on and turning into the inlet we ended up catching our mooring and went to bed.

Our time in Carolina Beach NC was not our usual cafe runs of fun. Instead it was several runs to the Hardware/Marine Store to fix up our leak. Which we “mostly did” reducing the leak from gushing when the engine was on to dripping when the motor was off. Easy to stop by closing the thru hull, good enough to give us time to order a replacement pump. Which we did after our next hop.

Nerve wracking and had us talking a great deal of talking about how the air cooled 10KW electric engine doesn’t have issues like that since it doesn’t have a raw water system to cool it down.