Saturday, Oct. 27

Hello – still from Iuka (eye-oo-ka) Mississippi!

Sue is finally feeling better! There is still some residual cough and she gets a little more winded than usual walking uphill, but those will get back to normal eventually. In fact, Sue is feeling so good that she was able to do a Walmart grocery run in Corinth (20 miles away) all by herself the other day while Brian was working on the boat. We mentioned that the marina has courtesy vans, but there is also one courtesy pickup truck. Wouldn’t you know it – Sue got the truck - a nice big Chevy Silverado! She had to do a little bounce step to get up onto the seat, and to drive it she had to lean forward to get a good view over the steering wheel!  Nevertheless, it turned out to be a relaxing 30-mintue drive each way with little traffic on winding, hilly, tree-lined roads for most of the trip.

Fortunately, it is a weekend again so the local restaurant, Aqua Grille, is open (Thurs – Sun) which provides time-off from Sue’s extensive & exotic recipes (haha!) - usually concocted in the Instant Pot. Now that we are spending our second weekend here, we are adopting Aqua Grille as our local “Emil’s”, though they do not have liquor - no Jack & Diets for Sue, but she’s adapted to Bud Light drafts instead. Our “regular” bartender, Michelle, knows our names and can guess fairly well at our beer order. We also went out to a local restaurant with some other Loopers this week. There were 10 of us at Freddy T’s which is an interesting pirate, sailing, nautical sort of place. One couple had to leave early which left 8 of us fitting into a minivan that holds 7 to get back to the marina, less than a 10 minute ride away. Luckily, Joe, the former band director (from the boat Band Wagon 3) decided it would be best if he sat in the space between the rear seat and back hatch door. We all got back to the marina comfortably and without any problems.

We’ve been trying to get Bo trained to use a fake-grass mat in the fish cockpit for his “business,” but at first we were limited by his unwillingness to traverse the step and ramp configuration Brian had created. Over time, Brian made several revisions to the original design. After multiple sessions of coaxing with cheese, bacon bits and offers of a dinghy ride, Bo has gotten the hang of getting from the sundeck down to the fish cockpit and back up again! (YES, fist-pump!) Now if he would only “go” on the mat! We’d really like to have this process accomplished before we must anchor out in alligator infested water & shorelines (a little farther south than our current location) which is currently Bo’s only other “business” alternative when we’re anchored. Another Looper told us of a dog psychic who worked with their dog who refused to use the grass mat. The psychic said the dog told her that the mat was too small. They told the psychic to tell the dog – that’s just too bad, use it! The psychic did so and the dog has been using it ever since.  Hummm…. We have not looked for a local dog psychic - yet! However, we might explore letting their dog have a little talk with Bo.

The pump-out problem was not solved this past week as we had hoped. We went to the pump-out station on the fuel dock Monday afternoon, only to find that it still wouldn’t work. The problem – either the extraction hose that hooks up to the suction machine, or our vent line (or both) were blocked. Marcus to the rescue again! Brian and Marcus evaluated various scenarios. It appeared likely that the 30-year old hoses were collapsing from the vacuum created during the pump-out process (you don’t even want to know the diagnostics that were used to come to this conclusion). We needed to replace both hoses. However, after multiple attempts at remove the existing hoses, it became apparent that it was going to be nearly impossible to do without cutting out significant amounts of floor or damaging other hoses running through the same area (two rather important bilge pump hoses). It appears that the original hoses were installed, then the floor of the master cabin was installed on top of them. No way to get them out! So a new path had to be found. Various options were considered, and we finally settled on Marcus coring a new pathway through one bulkhead and stringer. He and Brian then pushed, pulled and swore at the new hoses to route the new lines for the extraction and vent to the deck fittings. They then permanently capped off the old hoses at the ends under the floor. A short “cruise” to the gas dock to test out the new hoses and “voila!” we had pump-out success!  There was great excitement and celebration!

In a previous post, we mentioned concern about vibration in our starboard engine. Marcus re-aligned the starboard engine/propeller shaft after he solved our initial pump-out overflow issue. We did a test run on October 22 (prior to our disappointing pump out test) to see if the re-alignment solved the problem. It was definitely better than it was, but still a problem once we increased our rpms to 1800 to 2000. We now need to move on to a new set of potential causes. These include bent propeller, bent propeller shaft, damaged cutlass bearing, river gremlins, the list goes on and on. 

We need to be hauled out of the water to check these issues. The good news is this marina is well equipped to do so; the bad news is there are a lot of boats ahead of us in line. The next full-service marina with suitable staff to address such issues is Mobile, AL. Therefore, everybody that has an issue wants to take care of it here before setting off on the next 450 miles to Mobile. (We are not currently in the middle of nowhere – but we can see it from here!) Other good news, there is a “propeller guru” in Iuka, MS. We have seen multi-million dollar boats at the marina have their propellers removed and sent over to this shop before heading farther south. The bad news, that shop is really busy, so we’d best be patient. We thought about moving along at reduced speed all the way to Mobile, but that would likely require more days at anchor. Bo ---- shoreline at night ---- alligators ---- not good!