The Cavalry

Yesterday Betty had her first emergency.

Alice and I came back to the boat from the hotel and were doing our usual re-boarding routine.  The power and heat, of course, were already on.  I tried to turn the fresh water back on (always off while we're away), but the valve into the boat was frozen in the OFF position.
 

The frozen valve isn't a big deal. The rest of the system is heated,10 degrees outside not withstanding. My neighbor Al had this happen to him a week earlier.  We just warmed it up with the same heater he used and it freed up fine.  I turned the water back on.

Heating up the inbound fresh water valve.

Alice turned on the sink in the galley, but hardly any water flowed.  I sat there watching,  and we guessed it was just taking a little longer to fully thaw,  and  returned to chores.

Alice was making lovely toasted ham and cheese sandwiches.  Just when they were making the boat smell delicious we noticed a weird sound.

"Is that rain?"

It took a moment to register to my sandwich-obsessed brain that it wasn't raining in frigid cold on a sunny day, and it didn't usually rain inside the boat anyway.

One of the boat's old copper pipes had burst,  and was spraying water out of the old TV cabinet into the salon.

Since it was so high up I ran to the outside wet bar on the aft deck, and saw water spewing out of the electrical socket.

This of course resulted in a small freak-out.  I'd like to say I had I immediately turned the water off (duh), but the sight of the electrical system trying to double as plumbing made me run down like a madman and shut off all the electricity to the boat.

While I was at the dock power pedestal, to my huge relief I found Al and Nadine walking by.  This was no time to casually ask them if they wanted to take a look at something strange on the boat while I pretended to have it under control. 

Nope, I went right to "Help please!" I shut off the water outside and they followed me in.

This wasn't the first time Al had helped me out, but it was the first time I was in a immediate trouble. 

Al (aka, The Cavalry)

They took a look around, narrowed the leak to the specific pipe.  Then Al climbed down into the engine room and found the most likely spot.  (it actually helped that I left the water on for awhile.) While he was figuring it out down there I yanked out the flooded outlet and taped off the wires.

Back in the 80s they still used copper pipes instead of expandable pex.  And they didn't put any shutoff valves at key distribution junctions.  Nadine was going to offer her torch if we had to cut the pipe, but Al noticed compression fittings and thought we should try a cap.

Nadine loaned us her awesome legit jeep to go to Home Depot.  She had one of the cars high enough off the ground that it wasn't affected by the flooding.

Al showed me what to buy, and then he came back, disconnected the bad stretch of pipe and installed the copper cap.

Bad pipe disconnected to the left, new cap installed in its place.

There was a million reasons this might not work.  We couldn't definitively tell which pipe went to the wet bar and which went to the shower. Non-standard pipe sizes from the old Taiwanese shipyard, additional leak spots, cap not seating right, etc.  But to Al's bemusement and our grateful relief, he got it right on the first try and we had water again, without which the boat is not exactly hospitable.

There's a lot to still to do.  It might have happened because that section of pipe wasn't heated properly,  but it might also be because I've got 33-year old 1/2" copper pipe.  We've got to consider replacing it.

We're both hugely grateful to our neighbors,  who have come through for us like I've never experienced before. They're the ones who told me to always shut the water off when leaving, because that's what sinks most boats at dock. Now I see what they're talking about.

-- Chris