My head is still bouncing around sitting here at my desk again after 4 days of transiting the ICW this weekend. The boat is right now tied up in Pungo, VA, about a full day's transit from its soon-to-be new home at the Naval Station marina. Quite a trip. It went something like this:
THURSDAY 9th: Fly home from Navy wargame in Newport, gather up supplies and equipment, phone the boat yard, drive down to the yard with Verna. Get there around 2330 and sleep on the boat. It rains. There are leaks. Right by my head.
FRIDAY 10th: 0930 the travel lift gronks its way to my boat and by 1030 the keel is wet for the first time in eleven months. The boat floats. The bilge pump runs for about 5-6 seconds and shuts off. IT SHUTS OFF!!! Then comes back on after 35 seconds or so and continues on that cycle for a time, the interval slowly increasing. We ease the boat away from the launch basin and let it start to swell up. I fire up the engine and it purrs to life without a hitch. Nat and his brother and dad show up as crew, Verna and Ali and Nat's mom and baby Isabella cheer and take pictures as we motor off under the high bridge. We are underway to Oriental, about a three hour trip. After the tension of the launch, it is about all I could stand.
About 10 minutes into the journey I'm trying to figure out a way to create some throttle friction (after fruitlessly using a long stick as a fulcrum I end up jamming a bungee into the control lever and it works). Trying to find the right RPM/speed combination, dodging southbound traffic, trying to find an appropriate physical location from which to drive, the usual break-in stuff. I starting to smell something like a barbeque, or someone burning leaves and I look along the waterway for the source. Gazing over the transom it is pretty hazy and the smell is getting stronger. Something is just not right. I look forward again and it is pretty hazy in the cabin but I am now distracted by the engine starting to surge and I am finding I am totally losing throttle control. I am getting concerned. I look back again and there is grey smoke billowing out of the aft hatch and Nat's brother shouts from the cabin that the engine compartment is smoking. Then the engine quits. I tell Nat to get an anchor ready for release (naturally, the rodes aren't connected yet). James (Nat's bro') starts to open up the engine access as I am trying to restart the engine. It starts, but won't get above idle. I decide to just run it in gear at idle and get back to the marina in a hurry but now the engine won't run longer than 3-5 seconds. It will still start, just won't run. James isolates the smoke-- it is new exhaust lagging burning in- so I quit worrying about us burning to the waterline and concentrate on getting the engine going again. But of course we are now completely adrift, broadside to the wind and blowing ever closer to the lee shore. Nat has the plow anchor out but can't get it to set ("I can feel it bouncing along the bottom...") so we inexorably go aground, softly, mere feet from the shoreline. I transfer my attention from the engine to helping get the dinghy down so James can carry a Danforth out deep and we can kedge off before the ebb sets us hard in the mud. They continue to work the issue and I go back to the engine; obviously a fuel issue. I look at the bowl on the Racor and it looks normal. But what doesn't look normal is the little valve between the fuel tank and the filter. It is cross-wise to the line. So I open it (with disgust) and try another start. 2 seconds. Another start, HMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, just like a good diesel should. Now I try engaging the prop and the boat moves slowly around. The kedging operation stops and I keep working the engine and prop and the boat eases smoothly off the mud. We are free. Right in front of a pusher barge/tug combination. He may take up most of the channel but at least the currents around him are difficult.
But no matter: We tie off the Dyer to the stern and Press On! We keep the engine bay open to ventilate the fumes from the new lagging and the rest of the trip to Oriental is uneventful. Except when we radio in to the marina and don't get an answer. We have been hearing everything all along but can't talk to anybody. In Oriental I walk to the local marine supply and buy a hand-held. Allison and Christy and Isabella meet us for dinner. I sleep on the boat alone. It was a good day.
SATURDAY 11th: A cold, dreary morning. Nat and his brother will help out again today, as will Dave Pratt (friend from church (tall guy, looks like Bill Gates)). They are supposed to be back at the boat at 0900. Around 1030 they all show up and we finally head out into the channel just before 1100. I have diahrea (bad) from last night's fish and feel like crawling into a hole and dying. But the show must go on...
We are looking at about a 6 hour transit to Belhaven and this late start is putting us in perilously close to sunset. It will be close, but I don't like it. Our transit speed gets slowly slower and slower as (naturally) strong headwinds (20 kts or so) with corresponding choppy seas start to beat us into submission. At least it is cold too. On the good side, the boat rides beautifully through the seas, flinging the spray out, not over the bow. But it is a looooong run up the Pamlico sound with our speed getting down to 3 knots or less for long, long periods. Prevailing visibility goes up and down and the markers in this part of the ICW are quite far apart so most of the run is done on a compass course. My new binoculars won't make a single visual field; no one who uses them can get them to work right. I'm taking them back.
We make the turn into Pungo River and the seas finally lay down but the sun, which we have not seen all day anyway, continues to set and the evening haze continues to thicken. We have an hour to go. My stomach is in knots about the real potential for a dark, low-visibility transit up an unknown channel into an unknown harbor with shoaling all around. Nat, on the other hand, is confidently conversing about how night time is no big deal; we can just throw out the hook and wait, or just keep pressing on etc, etc,. It will be close. And it is close. We tie up with all lights burning brightly and maybe a mile of daylight viz left.
Just to add some spice to the mix, as we are making our approach up the marina's narrow little channel, talking to the dockmaster to figure out which berth was ours, another boater a few miles out butted into the net and started asking the dockmaster questions about finding the channel etc., and the dockmaster answered him (!), thinking it was me. I occasionally see stuff like this in aviation so took back control of the net and got: 1)Dockmaster to talk to me, and; 2) the other guy to shut up until I got docked. As soon as lines were across I put on my best Air Controller voice and calmed the other guy down, confirmed his position, and gave him specific directions on how to get in. You could hear the relief in his voice.
I, however, was a basket case, completely in the "full buzz" mode after a day of navigational, environmental, and operational tension. Verna drove back down to meet us (bless her!) and got us all (including Ali et. al.) to dinner at a local greasy spoon. The Stusse's all headed off for their Outer Banks vacation, Verna headed back to Norfolk, and Dave and I headed for the boat. I melted into the bunk. It was another good day.
SUNDAY 12th: A 50 mile day planned. The weather is beautiful. Dave and I get underway around 0830, long after the crowd of true-blue ICW boaters have left the dock. At breakfast a couple guys told us about a particular spot in the Alligator-Pungo canal that has shoaled up very badly. They ran aground hard late Saturday evening; around the time we were getting in they were about 15 miles out, running 35 knots to get in before dark and ended up getting towed in by Boat/US. As we approached the area a sailboater hailed us to say he had run into something that stopped him cold and he only drew 3 1/2 feet so I should stay to the north side of the channel. I took us down to near idle and watched ahead as a big cruiser yacht went sideways on the bar. It was a little tense: he was right in the middle of the channel and the spot corresponded with what the other two had told me. The cruiser pulled off and I got a good fix on the exact location. We got around the area unscathed but it was pretty tense nonetheless. A dredge was working the area for about half a mile.
The rest of the day was -really- uneventful. Made good 6 and a half knots all day at 2400 RPM. Burn rate is less than a gallon an hour but I still use that as a planning factor. Made a pretty lousy job mooring at the Alligator River Marina. The only eatery was a Texaco mini-mart but it was OK anyway. A really nice day underway. Dave and I got along very well. The boat's pumpout cycles got up to nearly three minutes and the engine ran like a champ.
MONDAY 13th: 20-25 knot NE winds kicked up a 3-4 foot chop on the Albemarle sound. Distance to Coinjock planned for around a 6 hour transit but the sea state and the winds often knocked us down to two and a half knots. We never saw more than 4 knots until getting into the North River. Again, the boat rode absoulutely beautifully, no pounding at all, no nasty rolling or sideways displacements, just a nice predictable pitching moment. Rough enough to put the bow directly into a couple waves and it just shrugged the water off and pressed on. At one point I was picking up the binoculars to look at a mark when suddenly there was a loud POP! and a pile of broken glass appeared in the cockpit. It looked like glass from a miniature lighthouse. I concluded that the violent pitching motion had flung the masthead light from its mounting. We were lucky it didn't hit either one of us on the head.
We got into Coinjock right on schedule and Jay Purser met us to swap with Dave as crew. He also brought news that Verna (bless her again) made arrangements with the marina at Pungo to berth for a week. Jay knows these waters especially well so we pressed on. Dave took his car back to Norfolk. We got into Pungo at sunset. Dave and his wife, Ryan and Tori, and Verna (bless her) all drove back down to meet us and we had a terrific seafood buffet. Tied the boat up tight for the week and am planning to make a run all day next Saturday to bring it home.
The pumpout sequence is up to nearly four minutes and the engine runs great. The oil pressure gauge shows low pressure but I'm not convinced it is right. There has been no oil consumption to speak of and no leakage at all so I'm thinking it is the indicator. I'll chase it down.
Cheers/Rick