Steve - were you sailing with us this week-end
Steve, as I read your account, I had to double check to make sure I hadn't written that account. The seaweed growth this year in and around our marine is just out of control. Even at high tide, my depth alarm is going off telling me we only have 4.7 feet of water beneath us when I know it is closer to 9 feet. Anyway, this past week-end, the exact same thing happened to us. Started up, everything sounded fine at first, then a little different sound, but water was still flowing fine so off we went. Well, about 10-15 minutes later, just as I'm about to raise the main, the temp alarm goes off. The wife was at the helm so I had her reduce RPMs to see if that helped, no luck and I could tell we were no longer pumping water. Since we were in the middle of a large body of water and in 43+ ft depth, I had her cut the motor and try to hold our position as best as I could. I pulled the strainer and some seaweed, but not bad. Since it wasn't enough to cause the blockage, I figured it must be blocked somewhere in the hose. I slowly reopened the seacock and no flow of water. A screwdriver didn't reach far enough, so the old coat hanger had to be pulled out of the tool box. One or two pushes and whamo, the water started flowing full tilt. I was able to pull out a good size clump of seaweed. Reconnected the hoses, and checked the strainer and water flow was excellent. Had the wife restart the engine, checked for leaks, ran the motor for another 15-20 minutes and everything was fine. Enjoyed the rest of the day sailing. The whole exercise took probably 10 minutes, I kept checking verbally every couple of seconds with the wife about depth and conditions. Probably could do it again in less than 5 minutes if needed. If the repair was going to take longer or conditions were different, I was prepared to sail to a safe location and drop anchor but this time didn't need to.