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..,