Today we wait....we were on the schedule for a marine diver in the early afternoon and also to be lifted out of the water on the travel lift at 3pm, if necessary, depending on what the divers discover and can do.
Renee worked on a good amount of her assignment for her masters class. Erik wandered around impatiently but kept himself busy with several small projects such as a new kickstand on one of the bikes which still works crappy :-(, took a ride up to the dollar store for bread and took a little nap.
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| Riva the Diva on the aft deck generator box |
At about 12:30 pm the divers finished up on their first job of the day (cleaning the bottom of a 65' yacht) and made their way down to us. On their initial inspection they stated that nothing looked to be significantly wrong, but that each prop appeared to have a small amount of cupping towards the ends. It was decided that we would have them change out both props to the spare set that we have. the starboard one (the one with the nasty vibration) came off VERY easily and almost appeared to be loose. This was encouraging and we thought this was likely the cause of the issue. The port side prop did not want to come off and they did not have the proper prop puller to get it off. So, we decided to just leave that one on and not switch it out since that side was not creating bad vibes. Unfortunately, after the prop switch out and a very brief trial run the vibration was still there :-(.
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| One of the divers |
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| Mike, the main diver |
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| We hoped they would come up with good news and were optimistic with what they found....but.... |
We walked up to the boat service yard to check in with those guys since it was now about 2:30pm and we were then hoping that pulling it out to get a closer look would unveil our issue. At this point we think the most likely cause is a slightly bent shaft. The folks over at the boat/service yard had a the manager leave unexpectedly and they are short staffed and NOT very organized. When we got over there to confirm our 3pm pull out appointment they were surprised and did not have us on their schedule or even set up in their system....errr. On top of that, they were out of appropriate boat stands to even get us up on blocks/stands even if they did pull us out. We were NOT very happy or impressed with them. We made some calls around to other boat service yards within reasonable distance and located one in Darien Ga (Two-Way Fish Camp) which is only about 20 miles away up a feeder into the ICW. Erik spoke with the yard man/mechanic and was told that if we come there he can get us out on Monday/Tuesday of next week. He was also confident, even without looking at it, that a bent shaft is highly likely our issue.
This all now falls into the category of "Planning is everything; The plan is nothing". We decided that we would make our way over to St Simons Island (about 11 miles away across the sound) because we had heard really good things about it and it is also on our way up to Darien. We prepared the boat and pulled up to the fuel docks to top off the tanks since we had now traveled about 120 miles since departing and the gas at Brunswick Landing was considerably cheaper than what we were seeing at our next several stops north. Did I mention yet that the plan is nothing?!? After fueling up we were set to depart to St Simon. But wait.....now the port (good) engine would not start. UGH! After messing around with a few things to try and determine what was happening it appeared that we had a battery issue to Erik. We decided to call off any plans to attempt travel today. We pulled into a different transient slip right up by the gas docks and offices. Erik brought a spare battery that we had stowed in the bow compartment up to AutoZone to have it tested/charged since it had been stored up there for several years. Fortunately, the battery tested well and was brought up to full charge. The new battery did the trick and we should be set to go tomorrow morning (depending on weather....its supposed to be a rainy/stormy day tomorrow).
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| Our new friend at our new transient slip for the night |
We utilized the marina grill to cook up some brat patties and baked beans for dinner. We showered up from the hot and humid day and headed out on our bikes for a short 1 mile ride to an AA meeting nearby. It was a really small but good meeting with a topic of "asking for help" lol.....can someone please HELP us get this damn boat running right?!?! Tired from the day of activities we retired to our beds early.
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