What a trip
Well, this is the first chance to post since we got back from Wilmington N.C. The boat is now on the hard a Westland Marine in Titusville Fl.
On the trip down we encountered Wind, Rain, dense fog, Cold, sand bars, debris. Cape Fear River has some wild currents and you have to watch out for trees, yes, trees in the river. We had to wait for the slack tide so we got going about 10 am. We missed our turn to the ICW, found ourselves in the Ocean, and had to turn around.
We encountered and overheat problem on the port engine so I spent the first night changing the impeller. We encountered an overheat problem during the entire trip. The boat has twin Volvos TAMD 41a’s. We checked and clean the oil cooler, heat exchanger, which seemed fine. If I kept the RPM’s down to 1100 or so it ran without overheating. The Oil Pressure got high also.
Anyway, as we traveled we grounded a few times, nothing serious, and hard grounded once. Some places can go from 10 or 11 ft. to 3 ft. in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, the battery on my laptop stopped holding a charge so we went with paper charts and the depth finder, which was fine. Smart phone app helped also. The radar came in handy until it quit. O’well, old boat; many issues. Nevertheless, Good old girl; got us home safe.
Probably, the scariest event is when we developed a leak in the shaft seal. My son was on deck and noticed the bilge dumping a lot. When I lifted the hatch there was 4 to 6 inches of water and fast incoming. I waded into bilge got the leak down to a drip. I checked every hour after that.
Overall, it was a good but long trip and unfortunately, we had to push so we could get back to return to work.
Now the fun begins, refit. I will post more later
Gordo
P.S. Thanks to everyone.