Tonight I met the captain of the Lagoon 420 docked just up from me. We got to chatting and he suggested a book with a title something like "Interpreting Modern Weather". It's a recent book about using modern weather apps.
We talked about weather windows and I asked him what are the worst condtions he's sailed in and his response was, with all this modrn information there's no excuse for getting caught in really bad weather because you'll kmow it's out there. His quite was:
"If you know, you don't go." -- Mike
He was retired and had been sailing for a lifetime. He had been in the Navy on submarines. A pleasant guy who seemed happy to share what he knows.
Coming back from the bar I invited him onboard because I thought I might learn something valuable. He seemed very impressed with the boat. "You did well."
I showed him the diesel and his response was, "It looks new, but you have a lot of water in the bilge."
"Yea, the stuffing bix is leaking and it's a design I'm unfamiliar with."
The "stuffing box" is a contraption that the spinning propellor shaft goes through. It contains a packing material that is compressed around the shaft by a big nut and is tightened enough so it compresses the packing material just enough so that water no longer flows into the boat. It's a real old school design.
I showed him the leaking stuffing box and he immediately silaid, "A leak like that will sink a boat." and proceeded to explain to me how this French design works and suggested I pack some additional material in to reduce the water ingress. What he said matched what others have said but he was able to show me what I need to do to take it apart and add some material.
What he said makes sense and I may give that a try tomorrow.
The bilge pumps are working fine so as long as we don't have an extended power outage I think we'll be fine but it needs to be addressed.
He seemed to think the ingress of water while doing this would not be more than the bilge pumps can handle.