Sea-Tirement Adventures

Started the day with a bad battery, the alarm was going off when we returned from dinner the night before (Red Barn Restaurant). The marina didn’t open until 8:00, so we sent our buddy boat off at 6:00 am and waited for the marina to open to see if they had a battery. Turns out they did have one and had it installed by 9:00am. Life savers!!! Also a very reasonable price. Called the Demopolis Lock to see about heading down the river and found out it would be after 1:00pm before he could finish with the commercial tugs and get us going. Back to the Marina office to pay for another night.

Also the generator decided to shit the bed, and quit drawing in water to cool it down so not over heated. By the time I figured it out it was too late to try and fix it. So I decided to leave it until we got to Bobby’s Fish Camp. More to story later.

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Got up at 4;30am to be at the lock by 6:00, but it turned out that a tug was coming northbound and we were going to be delayed until 6:30. 6:30 turned into 9:00 by the time we were locked down and headed south to Bobby’s. We had left early because it was an 85 mile trip and we didn’t want to arrive in the dark. Plan changed! Now it was time to run the boat hard, our normal 10 knots would be 12 to 15 today. We pushed hard and arrived at 4:20ish! The Admiral was really stoked at where I had taken her!!!!! I pretty sure the Captain is about to be demoted!

Turned out to be a great place to tie up for the night. Had a nice dinner watch our show and went to bed. Tomorrow work on the generator.

Got up early and headed to the engine room. Removed the old impeller,which was toast, and install a new one. The old one had completely fallen apart, sending pieces of rubber impeller through the cooling system. I was hoping that the new impeller would be strong enough to send the pieces through the system and out the drain. No such luck. I started taking apart the hoses to clean out what I could. Cleaned the hoses, which didn’t work, and decided to open the nut labeled drain to try that. Rocket scientist that I am, didn’t think far enough ahead, now I have opened the antifreeze drain and am draining antifreeze all over and cannot get the plug back in!!!! F&$k me!!! Finally got it back in and stopped the flow of liquid. Cleanup on isle 1!

By now it’s 9:00 and we need to go. Explained to the Admiral the we maybe to camping at anchor tonight without electricity. But I think I can fix it when we stop.

We ended up with another long day to get to a nice anchorage, the first anchorage we stopped at was to exposed to the river channel and not enough room for the boat to swing. We continued on and ended up at a great spot and back to the engine room for me.

I took the cover off the heat exchanger and clean out move of the impeller pieces, re-assemble and tested. Still no water flowing out with the exhaust. WTF, it should be drawing water through the sea drainer! I guess we are camping and hoping the inverter keeps the fridge running all night.