TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums British Virgin Islands Sea grass at Anegada?

Couple years ago we did two days moored at Anegada. During the second night the genset on the boat quit working. (actually I noticed no water circulation and shut it down)

Next day we sailed over to Leverick and had Mooring service come over to take a look. His first question was.."have you been to Anegada ? Raw water intake for genset was completely backedup and clogged with seagrass up to the filter. Was a real pain to get it cleared out.

We ran the Genset/Air Conditioners in the evening to cool down boat when cooking aboard and at night once everyone turned in.

Any one else experience this?

Is this "sea grass" the Sargasso pods or something else? Two years ago there was a particularly bad year for Sargassum. I never had much in the water at Anegada, it was usually very clear.

Never had very good visibility in the anchorage. Very churned up and sandy.

Lots of small blades of bottom grass floating in the water.
Don't think it was Sargasso pods

(BTW Arnd..... Nice boat!!!)

Yup... Twice at Anegada. Once a few years ago and this past summer we had the genny kick off in the middle of the night. The next morning I looked at it and discovered the sea strainer full of grass. I cleared it out but it still didn't fix the problem - the generator still kicked off after a few seconds due to low water flow. So I kept looking and discovered the through hull was stuffed full of grass as well which was a real pain to get unplugged and involved pulling the supply line off the valve and clearing the grass I could see repeated three times. It was not possible to clear the through hull from the outside. Not sure if a screen on the through hull would have been beneficial (?). When I returned the boat to CYOA a few days later they immediately inspected/replaced the genny impeller which turned out was slightly damaged. The CYOA folks don't take any chances!

Similar, back in October I had the AC stop working. That wasn't at Anegada but same problem - the AC strainer was full of grass. That time it was only the strainer and the fix was about two minutes once I figured out where the strainer was located. I ask about all the strainers during the check out process for every boat I take out. For some reason I didn't catch the location of the AC strainer on that trip/boat.

A little worrisome that your generator didn't shut itself down. It should have.

We do have spells of heavy seagrass - mainly in the summer. There is no sea grass on the beach or in the seas at all here now.