Day of Sadness – October 21, 2025, Savannah, Georgia, USA

It’s Splash Day.  This is normally a very exciting and happy day.  We have been working non-stop to prepare for this doing boat work, provisioning etc.  We were first on the schedule to be in the slings and splashed and they showed up, got us lifted, and splashed into the pit by 10am!  Yeah!  We had reservations just across the channel at Thunderbolt Marina (which is fantastic by the way) and we were docked there before lunch.

 That was when the first hammer fell, the bilge pump started going off about 2 hours after we were launched and then continued to go off every 6 minutes for the next two days.  Uh Oh, now we have a problem and it’s a big problem.  We immediately got ourselves back on the haul out schedule, but they had no time on their schedule or space to bring us back until Wednesday.  Our bilge pump was in good shape, we had 5 spares on board and if shit gets really real, we had a crash pump.  So, we wait and count bilge pump cycles.

Then the second hammer fell.  Our second issues was when we arrived at the boat, we started our normal routine of cleaning and getting everything put away again from the RV and found that our master bedroom mattress was soaking wet.  Not to mention it was pouring rain and had been for a solid week.  The rest of the day consisted of drying out the mattress and trying to determine where the water was coming from.  Leopard Catamarans have a known issue with the windows delaminating and we knew ours were going to need redone when we bought the boat but hadn’t had an issue till now.  While we were waiting to be hauled out the weather cleared up and we decided to take that time to recalk the eyebrow seems and rebed all four side windows.  It would have been great if this was the only issue with water ingress we had, and this would fix the bilge going off, but it didn’t. 

We also spent our time picking up our sail from the sail maker since the repair was completed and getting it up and back on the boat.  All our pantry provisions and beer provisions were also all put away, the entire boat was prepped by being cleaned and vinegared.  We were really ready to be splashed, finish up some last-minute items, and take off heading south to stage for our crossing to the Bahamas.  Instead, we got hauled out again on Wednesday to find the source of the suspected crack in our haul and rebed one of our exit valves which we found was leaking. 

Unfortunately, when we got hauled, there was no obvious crack, but it took the boat about 2 hours to drain out all of the water on the starboard side.  It was a mystery, so it needed to be ground out to hunt for the crack around the sail drive. Sadly Thunderbolt Marine is not a “do it yourself” yard and Ron is not allowed to do any of the repairs himself.  This means we are dependent on their team and timeline.  All day Thursday was burned by having the fiberglass team grind out the bottom which left us no closer to finding the issue.  We felt very beaten at this point so the team suggested we flood the bilges on the inside now that it had been ground out so they could see where the water was coming out. 

Having spent the last two days drying things out we weren’t thrilled with the suggestion but had little other choice.  We flooded the inside of the boat on purpose, and nothing dripped out around the sail drives.  Now we were truly beaten and called it a day.  The only upside was we met a very nice couple on a 55-foot catamaran having work done on their boat parked behind us and spent a lovely night in historic Savannah having drinks and dinner.  It took the edge off the depression from not knowing what was wrong.  The only thing we knew at this point was that the core was dry and there was not a crack on the seam of the pontoon.  Other that that we had no idea what to do next so Ron reached out to a few other Leopard owners for their thoughts.  Ron couldn’t prove his suspicion that there was a crack in the sail drive box because it isn’t accessible unless you pull the sail drives out.  That in itself isn’t a terrible job, and Ron had done it on our prior Leopard, but we were not allowed based on the yard rules. 

Friday morning, we finished dying out the bilges and Ron found a way to prove his suspicion of a sail drive box crack.  He drilled a hole in the box then I took the shop vac to blown air into the box while he went to the bottom with soapy water to see where it would bubble.  Finally, success!  The next step was getting on their schedule, and they said they could pull the sail drive on Monday.  Well, I guess that was better than nothing and we will likely only lose a week by the time the sail drive is pulled, and the box gets its fiberglass repair completed.  We are grateful this didn’t come up after we had taken off or during a passage.  Ron wants to do the repair himself but even then, this is the next best-case scenario to have it fixed before we start the season.  Hopefully we get launched again by next Thursday but they have started the repair.