What's a French Picnic, and what does it have to do with a bilge pump hose and switch? Read on.

Jamie did not have an easy month or an easy week, but she did have four days off for Thanksgiving! And she was willing to keep Fuzzy dog for us again, so Bud and I had plans, big plans.

On Thanksgiving Day Bud and I, Jamie and Adler went to my friend Loretta's for a great Thanksgiving dinner. We had all our stuff for a trip to the boat packed in Jamie's car because we were planning to leave for the boat right after dinner and the Land Barge needs the transmission rebuilt. (This after deciding not to buy a new car and putting $1500 into suspension and steering repairs.) Anyway, we were going!

Our stuff included two quiches and the ingredients for a Greek salad. And two large black garbage bags of firewood and an eight-foot long 2" x 8" plank. All that was in preparation for the French Picnic cruise. We were joining a group from the Texas Mariners Cruising Association (TMCA) and going to the east branch of Double Bayou, where they nose their boats into the bank (hence the plank for ease of boarding) and have a potluck supper and bonfire on Friday (hence the Greek salad and firewood) and a picnic with a French theme on Saturday (hence the quiches). We were ready.

We had a great dinner and a very good time at Loretta and Gil's and did not leave until a bit after 4. That put us at the boat at 9:30 PM on the coldest Thanksgiving Houston has seen in 20 years. The interior of the boat was well above the ambient temperature, but it was cold. We turned the little box heater on and I put a second blanket on the bed, but I had serious doubts about spending the weekend tied up in a pasture with no power and 38-degree nights. Bud was not such a wuss, but then his hands were not like ice cubes either. I had sworn when we left St. Augustine in freezing temperatures in January of 2011 that I would never sail in the cold again.

Some time in the night my hands stopped hurting, and the morning dawned still and bright. The sun down here is really warm, even when the air is cold, so the whole proposition was more appealing. And if we didn't go we'd miss the chance for new adventures. I was still nervous about going aground, the entrance to the bayou is only supposed to be about 6 feet deep. The possibility of going aground was real, and doing so in cold water was particularly unappealing. Still, we'd go slowly, and the worst that could happen is that it would get too shallow and we'd have to turn back.

I showered and put on my sailing undershirt, my turtleneck, my sweatshirt and my foul weather jacket. My sailing gloves were out. We picked up the boat, secured everything above and below, switched off the shore power and wound the cord on the dock. At about 9:30 AM we cast off the lines and then with a bit of drama "Jill, get the boat hook and fend off the pole. The boat hook is right there! Right there! No, not that pole, that pole!" we left. (All this from the man who often accuses me of not being precise in my speech - at least for me it's because of senior moments when the correct word just abandons me.)

Anyway, in the end I didn't have to fend off any pole, Bud backed the boat out with the stern facing the dead end of the fairway, and was able to power out forward.

As Bud made the turn at the end of our dock and I was about to go down to check the engine he said. "Wow, this is shallow, really shallow. The depth is reading 5.8 feet. We're going back." I checked the engine, cooling water was coming out the exhaust on the stern, and the prop shaft was properly dripping into the bilge. I quickly came back up and made ready to dock. With slightly less drama we were secured again. We'd made it less than 500 feet.

By way of explanation, the water levels in Galveston Bay depend less on the tide (which varies under 18") than on the wind. And the same persistent north wind that had brought the coldest Thanksgiving in 20 years had significantly lowered the water levels. The place where we saw 5' 9" was usually 7 feet deep (and yes, we draw just under 5' 10", and we were kicking up mud).

But that is not the end of the story, oh no, not at all.

After the boat was tied and I was down below Bud called down to me, "Jill, the bilge pump is stuck on." Oh, that was the noise. The sure-fire, never-fail bilge pump switch we'd installed in December of 2011 was stuck. It took me a couple of minutes, but I found the fuse holder for it and pulled the fuse to stop the pump (this is the pump that's wired directly to the house battery, so it can always run if the switch is activated).

Well, said we, it's been a while since it's switched on. There's probably just something stuck down there. We'll take the hose and spray it out and try to dislodge and get out whatever the debris might be. Meanwhile, I took the time to call the cruise leader to tell him we couldn't make it so they wouldn't wonder what became of us. His cell coverage was spotty, but he told me that others had the same problem. I asked if we could drive in to join them. He said we could go to a little town called Oak Island, and they could pick us up in a dinghy at Beason Park. Since cell coverage was spotty, we set the time for 10 AM the next day and said good-bye.

There is no perfect boat. Every boat is a compromise and every boat has things you don't like. The Norseman 447 sails like a dream. It's strong and safe and fast. The aft cabin berth is huge and comfortable. But the bilge is a nightmare. I may have ranted on this theme before. The bilge is only about 14" wide and a couple of feet long at the bottom. It's about 3 feet deep and it's located just in front of the engine and directly under the transmission. It is impossible to reach the bottom, and difficult to even see into. This little space has two large hoses with strainer ends for the hand bilge pumps, and the hose end and strainer and the switch for the electric bilge pump (the pump itself is mounted just behind the engine and is easily accessible - for a boat). We had replaced the float switch three times in quick succession in 2011 until we arrived at the current arrangement. Bud made a small platform out of Starboard, a plastic material for use in boats. To this he bolted the hose strainer and the no fail mercury float switch the shrimpers in St. Augustine favor. Between them he zip-tied a 6-pound lead weight used as a sinker by long line fisherman. The whole contraption was laboriously wiggled under the engine and over the high water bilge pump and into the bottom of the bilge. And although there were times when the switch seemed to take a while to shut the pump off (you can hear when the pump runs dry) it has worked well for almost two years.

Bud lay down across the engine and saw some debris. He managed to snag a paper towel (how'd that get in there!) with the handle of a broken deck brush. We hooked up water hoses to reach the bilge, put in the fuse and sprayed water in. The pump ran and emptied the bilge and didn't shut off. We added more water. About the third time Bud started to spray the pump shut off. We tried again; again it wouldn't shut off until Bud sprayed it. Bud took the boat hook and jostled the arrangement of strainers trying to free up the switch. No change. But when he brought the boat hook up the rubber end was missing. Great, another piece of debris in the bilge.

Finally we broke down and moved the hoses and pulled up the bilge pump hose and switch, mounted on its plate. The plate had bent slightly over the time, and it was all filthy. We had the bilge cleaned when we put the new engine in, but that was before the oil leak, and before the sucking up of salt water through the exhaust and the subsequent three oil changes, and now the plate and switch housing were covered with black oily stuff. We cleaned it all up and examined it. The one thing about this fool proof switch that we never liked was that the wires came out of the float at the pivot point, so they had to flex to allow the float to move. It now seemed that in the cool temperatures and perhaps over time, the wires were too stiff to allow the float to move freely. I think the design would not be a problem in a bigger bilge where the wires could extend horizontally for a bit, but in our bilge the wires must quickly turn up as the bilge is so narrow. I fooled around with the unit and finally held the wires so they went out from the float and then up across the top of the housing. That kept the first inch or two horizontal and it seemed to allow the float to move. I zip-tied the wires in place and we tested the switch in a bucket with some water. It worked. We remounted everything and after another struggle were able to get the unit back into place in the bilge. Bud pushed the plate around with the boat hook until he felt it was square and reasonably flat. We carefully fed the other hoses back down so they wouldn't knock the plate or switch. Then we tested it. The first time it pumped out the water, ran dry for a bit and stopped. Yeah. Add more water, it pumped and stuck on. Bud jostled it with the boat hook. It wouldn't shut off. Bud swore at the switch and the bilge and banged the boat hook around until I told him to get out of there before he broke something we couldn't afford to fix. I got down and tried to find the fuse to pull it. I bumped the boat hook, which was caught vertically a few inches off the bottom of the bilge. The boat hook dropped down, hit something, and the switch moved and the pump stopped.

By now it was after 4 in the afternoon. We picked things up, cleaned our hands and headed over to West Marine to get a new bilge pump switch. Our mood improved after we stopped for a seafood supper. We'd been living on Doritos, Cheetos and banana bread for the day. While we were at the restaurant I tried to call and let the TMCA folks know we weren't going to make it for the dinghy ride. I had to leave a message; maybe there was no cell phone coverage then.

The next morning, before breakfast we set off to town to get some material to use to mount everything, we didn't want to chance reusing the bent Starboard. We found a large piece of Plexiglas for $50. We returned to the boat to see if we had anything aboard we could use. The pieces we had were too small and too thin. So after he pulled up the hoses again, Bud went back to look for material for a mounting plate. Meanwhile I wired in the new switch and using the new grabby tool we bought and a bent coat hanger was able to fish out the rubber tip of our boat hook. Bud found that even the Plexiglas was too flexible and he ended up with a pretty expensive Kohler toilet seat, the cover of which seemed the perfect material. A little cutting, drilling and fastening later and we had a new switch mounted to a new plate, along with the weight and the hose and screen. Some more wriggling and finagling and it was all in the bilge. The other hoses were put in place. Water was added. The pump switched on, the water pumped out, the pump switched off. Hallelujah! We cleaned the boat up and ourselves up; and just 30 hours after we attempted to leave for the French Picnic, we were done.

We took a drive to try to find the picnic folks, but the road ended sooner than it showed on the map, and we couldn't get close. We stopped to see Oak Island and Beason Park and came back. We had Greek salad and quiche for dinner and spent a restful evening.

So that was our Thanksgiving weekend. And I'm thankful for family near and far, for friends new and old, very thankful for good health, and I'm still thankful we own that boat!