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Happy Holidays

A post by Mark
Hi all,

I started writing this about a week ago – I think on Christmas Eve – finally getting around to finishing it… we’ve been busy (all good stuff).  Here goes…

Merry Christmas from Naples FL. While our original plan was to be in the Bahamas for Christmas, we are very happy to be in Naples – visiting with Oma and Opa (Julie’s parents) and Grammie (my mother). We arrived around the 15th – its been nice to have a home-base for a while. We have been really fortunate – Jerry and Janet Belle (friends of my in-laws) have been super generous and have let us keep our boat on the dock in front of thier house. We can’t thank them enough!

Over the past two weeks, I’ve been able to get a lot of jobs done around the boat.  I rebuilt the fresh-water system – so now its working better than it ever has!  I also rebuilt a few winches and completed a few other small projects.  Its much easier getting things done when you have regular access to a car!  We also got to enjoy time at the pool, Willie had fun at the neighborhood dog park, and we all have had a good time.

Until about 3 pm today, we through we were leaving for Key West tomorrow – but at 3, we got the updated weather forecast for the Keys – not good.  Big wind (25 to 35 kts) and waves (up to 7′) forecasted for next Mon to Wed.  Also, the forecasters are saying that it won’t be safe to head from the Keys to the Bahamas until next weekend (at the earliest). So, while we could leave tomorrow (Sunday) and be safely at anchor in the Keys before the weather hits, we figured we’d have more fun here than hunkered down at anchor next week.   We’ll head South once the weather clears…

Wishing you all a Happy New Year –

Mark

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Should I have been wearing a helmet?

A post by Mark

The other day – I witnessed a relatively rare astronomical event (I think).

It was the end of our 3 1/2 day passage – around an hour or two after sunset.  We were about 2 or 3 hours from the marina in Clearwater Beach – the end was finally in sight.  I’m at the helm – cruising on auto pilot and just scanning the water for stuff – mainly, other boats – as there were no other obstructions in our path.  I take a quick look at the instruments, look up – and out of the corner of my eye, I see a bright green flare landing in the water.  Quickly, I scan the horizon to see where it came from.  I’m about to turn the boat towards it – thinking I’m going to assist in some sort of rescue.  I can’t find anything, so I call down to Julie to come up and to help me scan the water as well.  I was shocked to see the flare – as I hadn’t seen anything in the water anywhere near where it landed.  After 10 minutes searching with our spotlight, we see nothing and conclude I must have just been seeing things – especially since all marine flares are either red or orange.  I guess the lack of sleep was getting to me.

After another 10 minutes or so, I finally convince myself that I was seeing things.  Just then, the Coast Guard transmits the following over the radio:
‘This is Coast Guard station St. Petersburg – Notice to all mariners along the Florida coast from Key West to Pensacola.  Please be advised that there is meteorite activity in the area, and all mariners are advised to use caution.’

Holy cow – I think I just saw a meteorite hit the Gulf – and not too far from us.  Pretty cool.   Ranks pretty high on the list of things I didn’t expect to on this trip.

As a side note – we had a pretty good chuckle about the Coast Guard advisory…  Exactly how does one use caution to avoid a meteorite?  Do we just duck? Wear helmets?  What exactly are we supposed to do?  Plus – they were about 20 minutes too late.  Chances are we won’t have to worry about this again.

Until next time…

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On the Road Again

A post by Mark
Hi all –
It has been a while since I wrote – I’ll catch you up with the latest.
Last I wrote, we had just gotten to Mobile.  Interesting part of that day… on the way towards the marina, we hear the following on the radio “Catamaran leaving the Mobile River, this is the US Navy – Over”.  Yikes…. Way on the horizon, we see a big grey mass.  Turns out, its a Navy ship on the way into the river.  After a quick conversation, we agree with the US Navy that we’d go to the right side of the channel – staying clear of the ship.  Here’s what we saw going passing by…   It was pretty cool.

So, we ended up in Mobile much longer than we planned…  In Mobile, we needed to get the mast put back-up on our boat.  We thought we were scheduled to have it installed a day or two after we arrived.  Turns out, we weren’t scheduled until 6 days later.  The delay is especially bad because we wanted to be in Naples FL the weekend before Thanksgiving to spend the week with Julie’s parents, my mom, and Julie’s sister and kids (aka – the cousins).  During the delay, we did a bunch of small jobs on the boat – the biggest of which was to try to get the fresh water in our tanks tasting better.  By the end of the trip down the river, our water tasted downright bad!  This job seemed relatively straightforward – but has turned into an ongoing debacle which is still not fully fixed – as it seems that every time I fix one part, another issue pops up.  Two things are making this particularly challenging… 1) its a boat – and everything is just harder to fix on a boat.  It’s as if the designers try to put the things that break most often in the most difficult places to reach. 2)  We only have access to a car for an hour or two every day or so (sometimes less often).  Oh well – its all part of the adventure! (I need to keep reminding myself of this – especially when I’m in the middle of the job.  As I side note, I think I have created a few new swear words while contorted into ungodly positions on the boat – or at least created unique combinations of the oldies but goodies).

Anyway – back to the story….  Our plan was to get the mast up and pull the boat of the water to change the anodes – pieces of zinc under the boat that protect the engine and propellers from corrosion.  The folks at the marina told us that they could pull boats out up to 22 1/2 feet wide – which is good – since we are 22 ft 2” wide.  Turns out, they can only pull boats 22’ wide, which we found out when we got stuck pulling the boat into the lift bay.  Ugh….  Time for plan B (note – after a few tries, we’re now on plan D or E – we are fixed for now).
After we got the mast up and sails on the boat, we tied it up good and rented a car and headed to Naples.  We spent a good week in Naples – it was really nice to see everybody and relax for a few days (or try – sometimes – as it was a sometimes hard to relax knowing that there was still a bunch of work to do on the boat 10 hrs away).  Thanks to everybody for a good visit!
As Heidi mentioned in her post, she and I drove to Tallahassee for a day to see the Jimmy Buffett / Kenny Chesney / Toby Kieth / Jake Owens Hurricane Relief concert.  It was pretty cool – a lot of fun seeing all these together in various combinations.
In Naples, we ordered a satellite hotspot for our boat – a device that will allow us to get weather on passage and turns our phone into a satellite phone.  It was supposed to ship overnight – so it should have gotten to our boat by Monday – or Tuesday the latest.  It showed up Friday – further extending our stay in Mobile.   On Saturday, we finally left Mobile.
We headed out towards Naples – which is a 4-day passage.  We knew this was an ambitious goal – but we planned our path so that we’d be pretty close to shore and could head in to one of several ports along the way if we wanted to shorten our journey.
The girls are writing about the passage in depth – but here’s the synopsis… it was a bit rough.
The first day was nice and calm – as forecasted – until about midnight – when the wind and waves decided to kick-up.  It calmed down again in the morning – and again,  got really windy and wavy around 11 PM.  It also shifted – bringing us parallel to the Florida peninsula (instead of towards it like we wanted to). In the morning, we decided to head upwind towards shore – which added extra time to the journey.  We also lost one of our engines.  About this time, we decide to head to Clearwater FL instead of all the way to Naples.  We arrived in Clearwater around 10 PM – tired, but in one piece.  The next morning, we learned that our engine issue was just a line wrapped around our prop – so it was an easy fix.  The past few days, I fixed a few minor things that broke on the passage and spent way too much time trying to get our fresh water system fixed (still no luck – I’m going to have to replace the entire system when we get to Naples – ugh).  We’re in Clearwater for another few days while we wait for some storms to roll through.   Then – off to Naples.
I’ll try to be better about writing more regularly…
Until then –
Mark
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Were they messing with us, or just very wrong?

A post by Mark

The adventure continues. As I mentioned in my last post, we followed the lockmaster’s advice and anchored in a small inlet about 15 miles downstream of his lock. If you will recall, he told us there would be plenty of water. He also told us the water would be increasing 1 to 2 feet overnight (a detail I left out last night – figuring it would be irrelevant). Anyway, he was wrong…

We started at 4 1/2′ of water – a little uncomfortable for us – but enough. The next morning, I get up for my regular dinghy ride to the shore with Wille and notice that there is now a significant riverbank on both sides of the inlet, where previously, there was none. When I get to the boat ramp where Willie and I get to shore, the bottom of the ramp is no-longer in the water. The water level didn’t go up 1 to 2 feet – it dropped 1 to 2 feet.

This isn’t good – was the lockmaster messing with us?

We had some hope – as our guidebook told us that we should expect a tidal change of 1 to 2 feet.  It must be low tide now – right???

We start to slowly make our way out of the inlet. We get turned around and make it about 30 feet before our first grounding. We’re going really slowly, so, I’m able to back-up before we get stuck and try to reposition the boat to find some deeper water. Another few wiggles with the boat and we make it another 10′ or so. And then, we stop. We are in 3 1/2 feet of water and stuck in the mud. Note: at this time, we’ve abandoned our depth sounder and are now sticking our boat hook in the water to measure the depth.
So – on to the anchor trick. After a lot of work getting the anchor set, we’re able to pull ourselves out another 20 or so feet. We’re getting close to deep water!!! We now need to unstick our anchor and re-set it another 40 or 50 feet in front of the boat. After even more work, we get it re-set and start pulling. Based on the first few pulls, this last 40 feet are going to be the toughest. In the meantime, Julie calls the NOAA station in Mobile (the weather guys) to try to understand the tides, how much lift we can expect, etc.  The NOAA guy has no idea what Julie is talking about – as the tides have absolutely no impact where we are (Is the guidebook writer messing with us?). He also tells us that the water-levels are forecasted to drop another 6″ today and even more the next day.  This is looking less good by the minute.  Julie then calls the lock, tells the lockmaster what’s up – and he says that there is a boat in the lock that he’ll ask to come help us.  He also says that he’ll see if he can release some water from the dam to help – but we’re 15 miles downstream – so it will take quite some time for us to see the impact.

About an hour later – as we both exhausted from pulling (and making less and less headway), we see our saviors – not the boat from the lock, but a boat from the US Geological Survey that was coming out of the inlet to collect samples (water or mud – I never figured out which one).  Anyway, they weren’t really excited to help – as they were worried about getting stuck, but I was able to explain how they could put their boat in the deep channel and I could bring them a 75′ line from our boat – so they wouldn’t have to get near the shallow water.  Thankfully, they agreed – and in less than 5 minutes, we were free.  Thank you USGS!!!  It took a bit more work to get our anchor free (as we dug it in really deep), but eventually, we got it up and were on our way.  Our 7 AM start turned into a 9 AM start.

I’m really looking forward to getting off of the river!  We have one night left on the river.  We pick an anchorage with 20′ of water!  We should get there about 1 1/2 hours before sunset.  Unless the guidebook is really, really wrong, we should be good!

Bye for now…

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The River giveth, the River taketh away

A post by Mark

The River Giveth

Today, I got a free anchor! For real… Here’s the story.

As has become the new normal, we were trying to get a real early start today – as we were hoping to cover a long stretch of river to get to the next ‘really good’ anchorage. So, the day started at 5:00 – bringing Willie for a walk pre-dawn and pulling up anchor at first light (around 5:45). We were in a really narrow anchorage last night, so we had to carefully spin our boat around to get out. We went really slowly, got pointed in the right direction, and started on our way out. Until we stopped dead in our tracks. What??? We’re in 9 feet of water – we can’t be stuck. But we were. Ugh… Then, to make matters worse, the starboard engine just stops. I idle the other engine to think for a second.. We must be caught on something. While the engine is off, we spin around – and now the port hull is really close to the riverbank (meaning, the bow (front) is in the mud and a few tree branches are brushing up against the side of the boat.) We get our extra anchor out again and start pulling ourselves off the bank. As I set the anchor – the lightbulb goes off and I figure out what’s going on… We’ve wrapped our starboard propeller around something – probably an old rope in the water. Time to get the wetsuit out again. Into the water (now, at least, it’s a bit light out), and under the boat. Well – I was right – we had an old anchor line wrapped around our propeller. As I start to cut it all free, I notice that one end has a lot of tension on it. After I cut that piece, I bring it back up to the surface and Julie ties it to the boat. I clear the rest of the line from the prop and climb back onto the boat. I start pulling on that line – which pulls us off the river bank. After a lot of pulling (and using the engines to back-down on the line), I pull up a ~20 lb anchor.

We then pull up our extra anchor and are on our way – the rest of the exit goes smoothly. We’re out of the anchorage by 6:45 – still possible to make the anchorage – but things have got to go our way the rest of the day.

The River Taketh Away

Since the anchor was really muddy, we left it on the back of our boat – on the stairs that go down to the water. As we motor, water splashes up on the bottom stair and it helps get some of the mud off. Julie also spends a fair amount of time getting the muck off. (Note, the picture above was taken after most of the muck was off it). Fast forward an hour or two… I decide to try to go a little faster and make up some time. I speed up – about ½ mph. About 5/10 min later, I look back – no anchor!!! Turns out, the massive acceleration from 8 to 8.5 mph (I’m a real speed demon) was enough for the anchor to slip backwards off the back of the boat. What a bummer! Oh well.

The Rest of the Day

One of the things that had to go ‘perfectly’ for us to make the anchorage by dark was that we had to make it through one lock – and do it quickly. About 5 miles away from the lock, we see a barge (not an unusual sight). Unfortunately for us, we were going in the same direction – meaning that we were going to have to wait for it to go through the lock before we could (for, even if we passed them, they would go get to go first – as they have priority on the river). No way we’re making the far anchorage now. No big deal though – we talk to the lock operator, he tells us about another spot we can stop, and we head there for the night. We’re there now – and its pretty shallow (the lock operator told us it was 6-8 ft, our depth sounder says 4.5 ft.  Luckily, we draw 3′ 9″)– so we’re waiting until its light out before we leave. I don’t want another pre-dawn bout of excitement. Hopefully, we won’t have any post-dawn excitement either..

Until next time…

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Good Luck in AL

A post by Mark

Good thing we’re having good luck in Alabama. Otherwise, this morning, we would have lost our dinghy, Willie would have run away, I would have lost my shoe in the mud, my phone would have died, and we would have lost our steering in the middle of the channel near a barge. Luckily, none of those happened.

However, the 45 mins from 5:30 to 6:15 this morning were quite exciting.

It started slowly enough – I took Willie for a dinghy ride to the shore to go for a quick walk. I pulled the dinghy up the boat ramp near our anchorage – and explicitly thought – wow, I pulled it up a little too much, may be a pain in the neck to get back in the water.

After a 10 or so min walk, I head down the ramp only to find the dinghy drifting away. We’re anchored just a bit downstream of a lock and dam. Turns out, when they lowered the water in the lock, the run-off raised the water near us about a foot – enough to float the dinghy off the ramp and into the river. I quickly make my way down the ramp – Willie has no idea what’s going on now. I start wading trough the water, banging into big rocks under the water with my shins (fun times). Willie decides that he has gone far enough in the water and hits the brakes. So, I drop his leash and keep going in. Then, I take a step, and come up without my shoe. My other one flips off the next step, and I am quickly waist deep. Time to swim. The dinghy is only 5 or 10 feet away – so it’s pretty easy to get and pull back to shore. Luckily, through this episode, Willie decided to just wade in chest-deep and enjoy the show.

Once we’re back on shore, I start looking for my shoes. Did I mention its still pretty dark out – so, no easy task. I find the second shoe floating a few feet off shore – so I figure the first one must be close. So, now, I’m reaching around in knee-deep muck – and, in less than 30 seconds, I find it. Took a bit of effort to actually pull it out – but as I mentioned in the beginning – we’re having good luck in Alabama and I get it out. Sometime around now, I remember that my phone is in my lifejacket pocket – ugh. I open it up – its damp, but not dripping – and is still working. I shut it down and when I get back to the boat, stick it in a bag of rice (note – not sure if the phone is going to make it – I’m going to keep it on rice for the night).

The ride back to the boat is uneventful. We dry off Willie (and me), and get ready to leave. By now, it’s around 6:15. Up goes the anchor, I use the engines to turn us around and head us out of the anchorage, and start to use the steering wheel to maneuver us out. Funny thing – the wheel doesn’t seem to do much. I turn it to the left – we don’t go left. I turn it to the right – we don’t go right. At one point, I spin it around like a cartoon – just to confirm my fear. Yep – no steering. Good thing we have only moved about 6’ from lifting the anchor. So – down goes the anchor again. The steering fix turns out to be pretty simple – a set screw had worked its way out and the gear that connects the wheel to the rudders fell off its axel. We quickly found all the parts, put it back together (now, with Loctite on the screw), and were lifting the anchor and on our way in 15 / 20 minutes. The rest of the day was uneventful – 51 miles downriver – we were at the marina by 12:45. Later tonight, we’re taking the marina’s courtesy car to the local Walmart Supercenter to re-stock on food / drink / etc. After being on the boat 12-days straight, this is a real highlight!

As I write this, I’m looking at this plaque on our boat…

Truer words have never been spoken – for this has been a great adventure so-far.

Note: The phone is dead… It may be doing something, but the screen is fried (I dropped it a few months ago and it cracked – so I’m guessing the combination of cracked screen and water wasn’t a good one). Oh well… we were planning to only have one phone anyway.

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We made it to the ocean!

A post by Mark

Hi all,

As Lucy mentioned in her post, we’re safe and sound in Mobile AL.  We were very happy to get to Mobile Bay – as the last few days of the river were getting a bit old.  I have 2 or 3 posts that I wrote on the river but had no way to upload (we were in the proverbial ‘middle of nowhwere’).  I’ll post those shortly – the wifi here is pretty slow.

Bye for now…

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Going down the Jamie Whitten Lock

Time lapse of us dropping 82 feet in about 8 minutes. 

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​​note – this was a few days ago. We’re now in warm and sunny Alabama. Only a few more locks to go before we are at sea level – and about a week until we are a true sailboat again. 

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Mississippi- why do you hate me – part II

More from Mississippi…

After wrapping up writing the first part of this post, we checked the weather and realized we were in for some more thunderstorms. Julie and I took Willie for one last walk of the evening, and as we got back to the boat, we could feel the change in the air. By 10:00, it was booming out – big winds, rain, etc. Really, a great show. Since our dock was really well protected, we were very comfortable in the storm (it was just very loud and bright). 

The next day… We get up really early again to get through the lock and have time to walk around a small town about 5 hours away. We shove off at 6:45, and this time, however, the lock-gods are with us. We make it through without a hitch. Has our luck in Mississippi finally turned? Turns out – no….   

To get to this town (Columbus MS),  we need to turn off the main channel into a smaller one. The guidebook warns that the water can get shallow at the junction – as low as 6 ft. Since we draw only 3 ½ feet, we’re cautious, but feel comfortable going in. Any guesses what happens next? You got it, as I’m driving in, I see the depth sounder go from 6’ to 2.5 ft in about 2 seconds…. Smack dab into a sandbar (more like a mudbar – if that’s really a ‘thing’). Either way, we’re stuck. We try our trusty anchor trick – no luck (we can spin the boat – but we’re not going anywhere). Ugh… Good thing we bought tow insurance. A call to TowBoat US and about an hour or so later, the towboat arrives. He tells us that he pulled a 56’ boat off this same spot a few days earlier. Not sure if we was telling me this to make me feel any better – but if he was, it worked. At least I’m not the only idiot to get stuck here. Fortunately, the getting unstuck process goes smoothly – and we’re on our way. Only 20 miles to Alabama (fingers crossed).


Note:  As I hit send on this post, we’re at a comfortable anchorage in Alabama… sweet (temporary) home Alabama!

 

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Mississippi – why do you hate me? A two part series

A Post by Mark
Note – I didn’t originally plan this to be a two-parter, but Mississippi was the gift that kept on giving.  Part II tomorrow…

Part I

As I write this, we just experienced a beautiful sunset and stunning moon-rise from a free dock in a great little harbor. 


The 24 hours preceding it were maybe the toughest yet. Here’s the story…

Thursday afternoon, we head into our planned anchorage – a (supposedly) dog friendly spot (i.e. easy to get Willie on and off the boat). We’re struggling a bit to figure out how to get from the channel we’re in to the anchorage – as the directions in the guidebook seem a bit conflicting with what we’re seeing. Alas – we spot the small channel that leads from the main channel towards the shore. As we are heading right down the middle of the channel, we run into a bed of river-weeds (I assume that’s what you call seaweed in a river?). The boat stops dead in its tracks. We check the depth – plenty of water. We’re caught in the weeds. I try to back the boat up – nothing… the weeds are wrapped around the propellers. I try to go back and forth to free-up the props – the port (left) engine / prop seems to be working better, but the starboard (right) one is not doing anything – other than starting to emit a bunch of white smoke. This isn’t good… Luckily, Julie is smarter than me (not exactly a newsflash…) – and has the solution. We end up getting our stern anchor and tossing it out so we can pull the boat out of the weeds. After two tosses and a trip about 40 ft from the boat in our dinghy to drop the anchor further out, we pull ourselves out using the anchor and are free of the weeds. The port engine seems to be fine now, but the starboard one is not happy – so we shut it down for now. We limp ahead and find another way into the anchorage. Once we are settled, its time to go swimming under the boat to clear the weeds from the propellers. Even with a wetsuit, the water was chilly. Its also muddy – so going under the boat is pitch-black. I feel my way around and am able to clean out the weeds. I unwind a lot of stuff – so I’m encouraged that the engines should run better the next day. At this point, its starting to get dark – so I need to get a move-on to get Willie to the shore for a quick walk / potty break. Sally, Willie, and I hop into the dinghy and head to shore. Between the weeds (which the dinghy can’t penetrate) and really shallow sand bars, we can’t get near the shore. We end up stopping on a marshy sandbar and try to walk Willie up and down the tiny bit of solid land trying to get him to go to the bathroom. Based on how this story is going so far, I’m guessing you know how this went (not good). After what felt like forever, we had to give-up – as it was past dusk and now dark. Back to the boat – time to check the engines – belt tension, oil levels, coolant levels, etc. I start with the starboard one. I open the engine compartment to find oil everywhere – yikes. Then I see the oil cap is off – and realize that when I checked the engine the day before and topped off the oil, I forgot to put the cap back on. After a round of expletives, I get out the degreaser and clean up the engine. Once everything is cleaned back up, I check the other engine (all good), clean myself up, and have a great dinner (rice, bean, and cheese enchiladas).

After a smooth night at anchor, we woke up early and were moving by sunrise. Our goal was to get through the first lock of the day early so we wouldn’t get held up at the lock and could get Willie to a dock by about noon to go for his walk. We are close to the lock – and in the motoring to it, the engines both seem to run well – except that the starboard engine is still smoking more than it should. We get to the lock – only to find out that the lockmaster is holding the lock for 7 other boats (where was this guy when we got stuck in the rain a few days ago!). Ugh… almost an hour later, we finally get through the lock. As we’re going, the boat equivalent of the “Check Engine” light comes on for – you guessed it – the starboard engine. Message – high coolant temperature. Ugh… We shut it down, Julie hops up to the steering wheel, and I head down to see what’s up. I’m expecting to find that we broke the belt that drives the water pump (that has happened before – I know how to change that pretty quickly). I open up the engine which is under our bed – so I’m tossing bedding everywhere. All belts look fine. We start it up again so I can watch the engine – and the light is now off. Hmm… what to do. We run the engine for a bit longer – all looks good in the compartment – but Julie notices that there is a lot less water coming out of the starboard engine than the port one. The way the radiators in the engines are cooled is by outside water coming into the engine and being ‘spurted’ out of the boat. So, we shut it down again and I pull apart the water pump to see if its OK. I get it apart and notice that it is a ‘little’ broken (basically, it is pretty worn – but likely not the cause of the problem). I have the right spare parts and rebuild the pump – but as I feared, it didn’t fix the problem. I get everything put back together about 10 or 15 min before the next lock. Our plan now is to get to a dock so we can figure out our water blockage. By now, all 7 of the boats have passed us (as we’re only running one engine)- so we’re now last in like to get through the next lock. When we get to the lock, there is a barge in a portion of the lock – so not all of us will be able to lock through. This turns out to be somewhat of a blessing – as we see a small marina just to the side of the lock that we pull into. Willie is beyond happy at this stop as well. Julie and Sally took him for a walk – and without getting into the details, let me tell you that he needed to go!

Now – years of watching MacGyver finally paid off (and maybe engineering school too – but I’m giving most the credit to MacGyver – although, unfortunately, no chewing gum or duct tape was used in this repair).

Here’s the story… we figure something is blocking our water intake – probably the lousy weeds from the day before. Unlike a lot of other boats (and all other ones I’ve been on before), there is no water strainer that you can easily clear out and be on your way. To clear this blockage, we need to backflush the system. How the heck are we going to do this? There are certainly no tools at this marina we just pulled into (it was very run-down and a bit depressing). So, we pull out a 5 gallon Home Depot bucket and our small 12 volt pump. A random fitting and a hose clamp later, we have the output of the pump connected to the water intake hose and are pumping 5 gallons of water backwards out the intake. A second bucketful of water later, the intake was clear as can be. We put everything back together, started up the engine – and all was good. The check engine light was off, the right amount of water was coming out of the engine, and not a trace of smoke was coming out of the exhaust. Unbelievable! The day was turning around!

We end up going through the lock – only missing one ‘turn’ of the lock – and are on our way. Less than an hour later, we hit a small – but really strong storm.  For context, there have been possible thunderstorms in the forecast for each of the past three days- but haven’t had any. Until today…  While the lightning never gets too close, the wind and rain did  – complete wash-out conditions a handful of times. Really not a lot of fun. Luckily, the really bad conditions were relatively short-lived and we were able to get to full-speed again shortly. Because of our wait at the first lock, our running one engine for a while and our slowdown during the storm – we weren’t going to be able to make it to our preferred anchorage – which is just downstream of the next lock. Instead, we stop at a free dock before the lock – which turned out to be a great spot. 

To be continued..,