Sunday, Nov. 18- Thursday Nov. 22, 2018 (Gobble! Gobble!)

We had a mostly quiet night’s sleep at our Tensas River anchorage.  We’d determined that we had a 2+ mph current flowing through the anchorage and had set the main anchor without much trouble, let out enough anchor chain to hold us through the night. As with many aspects of the trip, Brian has backups and backups for the backups – parts, lines, navigation equipment and charts, etc. - which is a good thing.  He also has an anchor watch alarm app on his phone. The app uses GPS positioning and alarms if the boat moves outside a specified radius from the anchor. Unfortunately, the app gave two false alarms during the night. The first false alarm was easy to determine using a spotlight and landmarks on the shoreline to confirm we had not moved. The second alarm was early in the morning after the fog set in. It was impossible to see the shoreline, so he relied on the boat GPS chart plotter to confirm our anchor was not dragging. Whew!

While waiting for the fog to lift, Brian did his pre-travel engine checks and noticed extra water in the engine room bilge. A short investigation revealed that we had a crack in our generator exhaust hose (which carries water and exhaust fumes out of the boat. We were not getting enough CO inside to make our CO detectors sound an alarm, but we would not be running the generator again until we could install a new exhaust hose. 

What else could go wrong? Let’s see. We have a 30 year-old refrigerator… Hmmm… could that have a problem? Yes! You see, it had already given us trouble while running on DC power while we were underway – like it tripped the breaker, so it was not running as long as we were running. OK, we thought, we don’t open it much while traveling so it shouldn’t get too warm, then we can get it cold again on the AC power while running the generator at the anchorage (or plugged into power at a dock). Sounds reasonable? Right?!?  At the anchorage, the generator didn’t seem to have helped the frig re-cool itself as much as we’d hoped before heading to bed. That’s okay since we’d run the generator again in the morning to give it another burst of power to cool down. To our surprise in the morning, it was self-defrosting! It is not a self-defrosting refrigerator, so that was not a good thing. By the time we got to our marina at the end of the day, everything was barely cool in the frig, and cold but completely defrosted in the freezer. Ugh! Coolers came out, ice was bought and we saved as much as we could. But, we’re getting ahead of the story…

By 9:30am the fog had disappeared and we were heading back to the Mobile River.  As we approached the city of Mobile and Mobile Bay, the skyline changed from trees to buildings, boats and cranes – the mechanical kind, not the birds. We passed by the Convention Center which offered a wall to tie up to for the night if needed, many ship yards including Austal which builds some of our US Navy ships (see a catamaran and tri-hull in the photos), and ports for overseas container ships. Finally entering the bay, we were a little apprehensive knowing the shallow depths while looking at two large ships headed toward us in the shipping channel. Quickly recovered, we realized that we hadn’t seen that much open water since we were on Lake Michigan the day we left back in August! While watching the channel markers carefully, we found our channel to the Dog River on the west shore of Mobile Bay. Eventually we ended up in a line of several boats near the river entrance which goes under a bridge - apparently the locals know the waters well enough to go off the channels until close to the bridge. We arrived a few minutes later at Dog River Marina which is known to have the best repair staff in the area. They would be capable of helping with the generator exhaust hose, the refrigerator, and a couple other engine related items (fuel leak on the generator engine and oil leak near the raw water pump on the main starboard engine).     

Tied up in our slip and allowing for tides to raise and lower the boat throughout the coming days we were able to relax. Since it was a Sunday, the boat yard was closed so we couldn’t request mechanical assistance until Monday morning. Since our very old frig needs replacing, not a repair, Brian got online and found one close to its size through West Marine, which has a dealer on-site at this marina. The new frig will be 1” taller – and we have the space to accommodate that which will include some kind of power saw to adjust either the shelf above or the space below… soon to be determined. The local West Marine deliveries from the warehouse in SC are on Tuesdays - just missed it for this week. So, it will arrive next Tues, then can be installed on Wednesday.

Engine Room Repairs:

Tom (the head of the repair shop) got to the boat late Wednesday morning to assess our needs. He is very experienced and thorough. He believes they can get the replacement exhaust hose and a couple generator engine fuel line replacement parts locally by early next week. He is also ordering a replacement gasket for the starboard engine raw water pump and will hopefully have that early next week (the repair shop is closed Thursday through Sunday for Thanksgiving). The mechanical staff is very busy with all the Loopers passing through, so it is hard to tell exactly when they will be able to get things done. We are hoping for Wed so we could possibly be on our way again next Thursday. (How many times have we had to say … “be on our way again…” so far this trip!)

This is being written on Thanksgiving morning. Yesterday, we had our own little Thanksgiving meal since Sue didn’t think the turkey breast should remain defrosted any longer. With one little oven, the 3 burner stove (that can’t be used at the same time as the oven, it’s one or the other) and a microwave – we were able to have turkey, gravy, stuffing, green beans and baked potatoes, and everything was hot at one time! (Sue’s sister will be so proud of her!) And we have leftovers for today!

We wish you all a wonderful Thanksgiving – whether you're on your own or with friends and/or family. We are so very thankful to have all of you in our lives!