The sea is still pretty rough and I am still nauseous. Winds are below 30 knots now, but still hanging out in the high-20's. We still have water blasting over the side. A few times I left the front of the dodger unzipped slightly and got blasted in the face with sea water.
Nausea, headaches, extreme fatigue, thirst/hunger while unable to eat; seasickness is much like a bad hangover...without the fun of the binge.
We had a scare at night when our bilge alarm went off around 2:45am. This alarm activates when there is way too much water in the bilge. We were all a little uneasy when we lifted the floorboards and found a foot of water in the bilge. We scrambled around trying to find the source of the leak and my heart sank when I saw a river of water running down to the bilge from below the forward cabin. I thought we hit something and were sinking.
A boat is designed to take on some seawater. It is unavoidable as water splashes up on deck and enters through the hawse pipes that feed your anchor chain out from the chain locker. So the idea is to minimize the amount that enters and then to make sure you have automatic and manual bilge pumps strong enough to counter the water intake.
After searching around for awhile and not finding any obvious leaks, we discovered that the hose had just slipped off the primary bilge pump and so the water was just being shot back into the bilge, it wasn't being pumped over board. We hooked it back up and within 30 seconds had an empty bilge again.
What a relief...
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