Today started out well enough. At breakfast, we received a phone call from Inflatable Experts telling us that they could get the dinghy today if we wanted. We called our yard supervisor and he thought that it might be possible, so we headed to the boat to get the dinghy down.
When we got there, we saw immediately that there would be no way to remove the dinghy today. So after a quick conference with our yard supervisor, we decided to bag it for today, but to make sure that things would be arranged for Monday. Everyone was happy.
Then we went to West Marine to get our hatches. Not only was our second order in, but our first order had finally shown up. We picked the hatches up and headed back to the yard. At this point, we should have split for the day.
We got out the old computer and Mike started setting it up for his parents. I went to work unpacking the boxes of stuff and stowing it in the aft stateroom. We worked for the next little while peaceably, until one of the painters called us and said that we were needed to look at something on the keel of the boat.
We climbed down and were greeted with the sight of water streaming out of our keel on to the ground. We discussed this with the guy working on our keel, then I headed in to talk to our yard supervisor. After a brief discussion with him, we decided to put a couple of pilot holes in the lower points of the keel to see if water was there as well. The first hole drilled produced water. The second hole drilled did not. As the third hole was being drilled, the drill battery died so he needed to get a different drill.
The fourth hole drilled also produced water. Finally, we returned to the third hole and drilled a little bit further. Extremely foul greenish water started coming out! We had hit our holding tank! The carpenters shop, right next to our boat and downwind of the leak, cleared out immediately.
Mike suggested that I call Cheoy Lee Shipyards to find out more information on how the holding tank was placed in the boat, since we both suspected that it was an built in to the hull of the boat. We were referred to the person who had commissioned all of the Cheoy Lee boats that were sold through the Florida office. Of course, the one boat he did not commission was ours! However, he confirmed that it was built in as part of the hull.
We headed in to pass this information to our yard supervisor who also spoke with the person. The good news is that this should be a relatively easy fix since the tank sides are tabbed into the hull and what was pierced was the hull itself. That still did not make us feel any better though! At this point we decided to call it a day!