Monday, July 17, 2017

7/16/17 Sunday - Day 1 - Home to Marietta Boat club

60 miles and 7 locks down the muddy Muskingum today.  Left our home at 9:30am today to start our looping adventure!  The water was running fast and high.  It was quite an adventure traversing some of the locks.  Stockport Lock was VERY interesting to say the least.  The water was crazy fast and creating 3 ft waves as we exited the downside.  We had to bring the boat up to half throttle as we exited the doors just to get through it.  On down river at Luke Chute we had our next challenge.  Because of the high water there was a boatload (pun intended) of debris at the down side of the spillway. There were piles of logs, and misc stuff......we muscled through slowly with no damage done :-)
We arrived at Marrietta Boat Club and we're greeted with a smile by Howard.  He helped us to fuel up, pump out, and into our slip for the night.   When we tried to get the shore power hooked up we experienced another kind of challenge.  We could not hook up without tripping the Marina's new GFCI breakers......hmmmm.  We paused to cook and eat and then dove into trying to figure out what our electrical issue was.   After a couple of hours of taking apart electrical panels and such we decided it was time to call in a pro.  We called Roger, a boat mechanic we know in Marietta.  He suggested we talk to George , an electrician who also had boats there at the club.  He didn't have George's # but fortunately 'Peeps', another club member down at the docks, did have it.  In comes George who agrees to come down even though it is almost 10pm .  We spent about 2.5 more hours with George before finally finding the issue and making the fix.   It turned out to be an issue with the new inverter we had installed a couple weeks ago.  There was a 'ground loop' that needed disconnected for marine application.   The best part about our new marine electrician friend was that he was full of good and funny stories :-) AND.....for after hours service it only cost us a cup of coffee and $0.00!  More proof positive that boaters are great people :-). 
It was a long and tiring day that ended with a bedtime after 1am.....we're to old for that!  
Leaving home for grand adventures!
Stockport Dam and Mill
Stockport coming out of the lock into the rapids
Debris coming out of Luke Chute
Docked at Marietta Boat Club

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