Something Strange in the Cooling

Steve G writes…

There is often some tension as you lean awkwardly over the back of the boat to check that there is sufficient flow of water from the engine exhaust. Usually there is an intermittent flow that requires some concentration for more than a few seconds to satisfy yourself that the flow is enough to serve the purpose of keeping the engine cool for the intended journey. On this particular day, I wasn’t skipper and not very familiar with Elfida so decided I’d start to correct that and start the engine up for the skipper.

There was certainly an initial spurt of water but then little more than a dribble so,  realising things weren’t right, I quickly stopped the engine. There were some mumblings from the skipper about dodgy knees so suddenly I realised it really was my chance to get to know the workings of Elfida a bit better.

I had a pretty good idea where the engine was but not much else so decided to start with the basics and find the seawater inlet. That took me a few moments to locate peering into the side of the engine and fumbling around the bottom of the boat. The inlet felt OK so I followed the pipe moving to the front of the engine. I could see the pump housing and followed the pipe to the top of the engine where it disappeared. Next I identified another pipe leaving the top of the engine and it was then that something caught my eye.

At first I thought I could see a brown leaf in the pipe but the leaf seemed to move. The pipe was barely transparent so I looked closer and suddenly I could see what looked like an eye looking back at me!

I was somewhat surprised but, on closer inspection, what had initially looked like an eye turned out to be an eye! It took just a few minutes to get a screwdriver and undo the jubilee clip holding the pipe in place to find out more. So far, nothing too challenging but I felt nervous so used a large piece of paper towel to ensure my arm wouldn’t get bitten off. I managed to ease out whatever it was from the heat exchanger and drop it into a waiting bucket.

It was only now it was evident that what had been blocking the water pipe was an eel, maybe 6 – 8” long! The assumption was that it had probably been poking its head into the stopcock as we started the engine and had been sucked up the pipe, through the pump, up through the heat exchanger where it stayed until I rescued it.

The eel was obviously alive but fairly subdued and most likely not about to rip my arm off so I decided to give it a chance of freedom. I carefully tipped it off the back of the boat and watched as it slowly moved getting used to its new freedom. I still wasn’t too sure it was very well but then I was conscious of a shadow in the water and then… Whoosh! Our little friend was sucked up into the mouth of a big fish!!!

A couple of morals from this story: do ALWAYS check the water is coming out of the engine exhaust of the boat when you start the engine; and from an eel’s point of view, just when you think your day can’t get any worse, just maybe it will.