I knew I would have to play mechanic at some point...

It is raining and blowing here today and we are planning on leaving tomorrow morning to head over to Rhode Island. I went down to the engine room to check on things and I found some bad stuff...

There is about 2-3 gallons of sea water under the port engine and I could see that it was dripping on the port stringer and running down to the center. It appeared to be coming from the transmission cooler on the port engine:

The transmission cooler is the white cylindrical thing in the middle of the picture and the transmission oil circulates through it. This thing is the last item in the raw water cooling circuit and it also has a single feed coming out that provides water to the shaft seals. The rust on the bracket was not there when I left and wipes off and is not the bracket rusting. It is coming from the joint in the bracket so something has been "leaking" here for awhile but I have not noticed it. That bracket was painted by me a few weeks ago because it did have rust on it but was dry from what I could tell... apparently not. The other bad thing about this location is the air intake is there. It is the black thing at the top of the picture and I removed the air cleaner so I could investigate this. Sucking saltwater into the engine is just bad... but that is where all leaks occur... by design.

My worst fear was the cooler was leaking and sea water was in the transmission. The transmission oil was clear and upon further investigation, water is leaking from the hose that feeds the shaft seal:

It is the fitting on the right in that picture. The problem is I need to pull this cooler off to look at it more closely but I don't have a spare rubber o-ring that the cooler uses to fit inside the coolant heat exchanger... My luck will be if I pull that cooler off, the o-ring will break or be bad or not seal right when I put it back and I'll have a bigger mess.... Also, that shaft seal hose has a hydraulic style fitting on the cooler and if the hose is split or leaking, I'm going to have to get a new one made before I leave... or use some rescue tape on it to get to the mainland tomorrow...

More later...