We needed to figure out where the leak was coming from. The first thing to do is to taste the bilge water...really nasty bilge water. You just stick your finger in the water and then lick your finger it to see if it is salt or fresh water. We hoped it would be fresh water which means the internal fresh water system is leaking...much better than an external leak in the hull!
No such luck...it was salt water. So, we checked all the thru hull fittings and hoses to see if any of them were leaking. They were all fine so now it is a more difficult thing to figure out.
We went to the marina office and they put us in touch with a diver who could come out and dive under the boat to check the hull and keel. Long story short...he found a small crack where the keel connects to the hull and water was leaking in through the keel bolts. Sounds like a big problem to us!
We spoke to several boat yards about how to fix it and they all said it was a major repair and could take quite a while to get it done. You never really know how good they are at repairing things so we kept inquiring around.
In the meantime we were able to enjoy Charlotte Amalie.
The view from the Mafolie Restaurant
Downtown streets
Our favorite restaurant..Glady's
Morris...the receptionist at the Oceana Inn where we had a couple of glasses of wine
A small world event happened to us while we were sitting on Kinja one day. A guy cme over and knocked on the hull to say hello. He said he just had to stop by because he saw that Kinja was from Roche Harbor, WA. He said he ran a whale watching business out of Friday Harbor (which is on the same island as Roche Harbor) and spent the winters here in St. Thomas. But in addition, he couldn't believe the boat was named Kinja. He lived on Water Island, just off St. Thomas and his good friend had also named his boat Kinja (after the book, Don't Stop The Carnival). He continued to tell us that the story "Don't Stop the Carnival" actually took place on Water Island...Kinja was home!
So, back to the leak. We are not sure where to get it repaired or if we can trust the repair yards to do the repair the correct way.
Tyler is on his way down for a visit and unfortunately it looks like we will not be able to sail with him. We will have to figure out what to do.
Life is still very good.....
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