Heading South October 2013

Pat Stair and I drove down to Paducah Friday afternoon Oct 25th, stopped for a few hours of sleep along the way, and arrived Saturday October 26th around noon to motor down to the Gulf.

We spent six hours working on the gen set trying to get the cooling issue repaired.  We lucked out as the marina had the correct impeller (the one I got online was not the correct one).  Even with the new impeller the gen set would not cool itself.  We then tried hooking up a 12v water pump into the system but it does not keep pumping continuously so the gen set will shut down after about 15 min or so.  Very frustrating as we spent all day on the project and I did not get a chance to wash the boat.

At about 7 PM we went in to Paducah with the courtesy car, dropped the rental car off, went to WalMart for provisions (there was no other choice) and then hit the sack around 10PM

Sunday morning I was up at 5:40 getting ready to head out.  Everything was set and we pulled out of the slip at 7:10.

 We cleared the breakwater and I ran the RPM up a little to get the alternators to kick in and right away the water temperature on the starboard motor was too high (205).  I shut the motor down and after a little bit we determined the exhaust cooling was not working.

Back to Kentucky Dam Marina!  We motor back to our slip 45 minutes after we had left.  Trick looked up where the impeller is located on the motor and I pulled it apart.  Yep, the impeller is bad.  The blades are kinda okay but it is spline driven and the impeller is just too worn to spin with the shaft.

This time Kentucky Dam Marina did not have what we need.  The Dockmaster told us about Marysville Marine in White House Tenn (outside of Nashville) so we have a rental car reservation and will head there first thing in the morning to pick up a new impeller.

So now it looks like we will be heading out Tue the 29th.  We were hoping to catch up to Chris and Kerm Wold somewhere before Demopolis as they cannot go lower than Demopolis any sooner than November 1st.  We will not get to Dempolis until Saturday Nov 2nd so we may be two days behind them.  We might catch up to them in Mobil and then perhaps cross the Gulf with them later in the week weather permitting.