Musings on the ICW

Cruising down the ICW gives a person lots of time to think about things. One mystery today is the continuing one of why ALL the birds have to pose for pictures now that Susan is off the boat. Today, we even had a seagull on a crab float! 

Yes, another not so great photo. I need a telephoto lens for my IPad. You can't even see the white heron in the reeds! But, believe me, the birds are out today.

Speaking of animals out for the day, we also had our daily dolphin show. Here you see Peggy looking at the area where the dolphins were performing.

In case you can't guess, I've given up trying to catch the dolphins at play. I'll wait for Linda to get on board with the nice camera.

Another mystery for me is the one of the electric poles. Take a look.

Yes, they come out of nowhere. They appear to go nowhere. They appear to be in a high marsh. This mystery has two parts. You can ask yourself who might be so important as to warrant electricity out in the middle of nowhere- somewhere between Savannah and Brunswick, GA. AND, you can also ask how the heck does the electric company get to those poles?

In the meantime, we just keep moving south. It's another beautiful day on the water.

Savannah Highlight- X marks the Spot

Our visit to Savannah took us to historic River Street. There is an interesting place on the walk along the river, and an X marks the spot! It's known as the echo chamber. Wen you stand in the center of the X, your voice echoes. It's great fun to do this. It's even more fun to watch the faces of other people as they discover that it actually does work!

This, my friends, is not the best picture of this interesting location. But, it does show the pattern of the X inlaid in the brickwork.

If you keep walking east along the waterfront, you'll also get to see the Olympic Yachting Cauldron. It was lit by the Olympic Flame for the 1996 Olympic yachting events. Yes, the Olympics were held in Atlanta that year. But, seriously folks, you can't have water events unless you're in a town on the water! So, the yachting events were held off the coast of Savannah.

Off Again- But You Knew That About Us Already

It's 6:57 AM. The hook is up. We are on our way further south. 

We're Anchored!

At last we are at anchor. We have traveled for almost 12 hours today. We did not leave until 8:30 AM, and it's five of eight now. We dropped the anchor, and ate immediately. It was a fairly uneventful day on the water- our favorite kind. we had several dolphin shows today, but they all only had two or three dolphins- and none of those dolphins was interested in showing off. they were all just swimming along. The sun was shining, and the river just rolled on along. For dinner tonight, we have a an interesting pork and apple dish. First I cooked the pork tenderloin pieces. After removing them from the pan, I sautéed apples and onions in butter, apple cider, and rum. Then, I put the pork back in and let it simmer. Pretty yummy.

A Quick Stop

We've stopped for a quick pump out at Skull Creek Marina. The day continues to be a beautiful one. Even better, all the pelicans have come out to pose for us. Susan REALLY left too soon!

Although it is hard to tell, practically every pole has a pelican on it!

Morning in Beaufort, SC

It's bright and early here in Beaufort. Terry is already headed off to Lowe's and to return the rental car. It's a beautiful sunrise. But, this picture is from inside the cabin because it is too chilly for your faithful blogger to venture outside. Michael says it is only a little chilly. Those of you who know Michael know what that means -- it's not warm enough for me to wander outside!

When all the crew is back on the boat, we'll take off to get a little further south. No real destination today- just an effort to keep on pushing southward.

Ships of the Sea Museum

We took the trolley tour around Savannah today. The weather did not look promising for LUX, so we rented a car to get to Savannah. Now, at the end of the day, we are checking out a museum full of boats. Let's see.... We've visited a fountain, checked out the waterfront, and looked at ship models. You can take the boys off the ship, but you can't take the love of the maritime out of the boys.

[Terry: On our way back to LUX, we stopped at The Old Oyster Factory on Hilton Head Island. Gee did the research while we were driving and found that it had great reviews. It was a great side trip and several of us have leftovers for another taste of a yummy meal. Today (10/10/2013), I was curious about where the restaurant was in relation to the ICW. The blue dot (identified by the red arrow) is where we were when we passed Hilton Head. We put 142 miles on the rental car in our trek to Savannah and back.]

We're in Savannah

Taking the tour bus around. We got off to photograph the most photographed fountain in Savannah.

Yummy Dinner

Spending so much time on a boat really requires that we think about feeding the crew a little more than  peanut butter and jelly. So, much of my pre-boat time is spent reading lots of recipes and plotting out menus. Then, once onboard, I end up shuffling things around. The most important part of boat life is flexibility in all things. That certainly includes menu planning.

Take tonight as a good example. I had planned on having a nice tortellini and shrimp salad one of the days we were underway in warm weather. Well, I never got around to that on the planned day. We ended up eating leftovers that day. So, that tortellini- all nice and fresh- was sitting around taking up refrigerator space.

That brings us to tonight here in Beaufort, South Carolina. It's cold. It's windy. In fact, it is 63 degrees out there. We are staying nice and warm here because we have the really nice enclosure. But, it certainly wasn't cold tortellini salad night! Time to improvise.

After a quick web search, I had the basics of an interesting dish. Betty Crocker's website offered up a recipe using medium shrimp sautéed in butter with the tortellini and a little basil. But, surely I can do better than that. So, I started on my riff...

First off, I'm on a boat. I don't like recipes that end up with too much left over stuff - especially smelly stuff like shrimp shells. So, when I planned for this trip, I purchased a bag of salad shrimp - already cooked and peeled. Quick and easy, right! Let's be honest here. After a long day on the water, I am in no mood to start cooking a big dinner with lots of dishes to do afterwards. That's no fun for anyone. We just want to kick back and relax. So, I want a simple yet tasty dish. Here's what I did.

I cooked the tortellini. Meanwhile, I rinsed the shrimp in cold water. I moved them from the colander to a bowl. I drained the cooked tortellini in the colander. I added butter to the pan. I sautéed those little shrimp with half an onion (chopped up of course). I added some Black Box Chardonnay. I tossed back in those tortellini, and I added one half cup of Parmesan cheese. Yummy!

Meanwhile, Peggy put together a scrumptious salad. It had romaine, spinach, craisins, almonds, golden raisins, and celery. Boy, was it yummy. Take a look.

Everyone really enjoyed this dinner. So, I will add it to my list of dishes that are keepers.

It's A Poopy Job…

and someone has to do it. It is time to replace the holding tanks. The old aluminum tanks have been previously repaired and we've also discovered that the internal pipes have holes which prevent the tanks from being emptied at a pumpout station. Gravity overboard drains are typically used in the Islands, but not in the Chesapeake. So we need tanks that will allow us to effectively perform pumpouts.

We ordered our tanks from Triple-M Plastics in Maine. A number of other Leopard owners have purchased tanks from them, so we decided that we should use them as well. The tanks are PVC and nicely done. We had modified the original Leopard 40 drawings to show that the drain connection as 1.5 inches instead of 2 inches, so that we can use sanitary hose for that fitting. That also matched the existing hose size to the gravity drain seacock. The result is that we didn't have to do any strange plumbing fittings or adapters.

The tanks arrived and the only problem I could see is that they were missing the mounting tab at the top through which a U-bolt was screwed. The U-bolt holds strapping that helps keep the tank from moving around in its locker.

Katrin at Triple-M sent us PVC L-bars that I was able to cut to fit around the inspection port on each tank. I also had to file down the welds on the top so that the L-bar would nicely mate with the top of the tank. The glue was standard PVC glue like you'd find in any hardware store plumbing department.

The old tanks were removed by cutting the hoses to free the tank. It is obvious from the hose that ran from the toilet to the tank that it was time to replace them. The effective ID was probably around 3/4 inch, due to the years of calcium deposits on the inside of the hose. It also made the hoses very stiff.

Ed on Esprit de Mer recommended removing the deck fittings and rebedding them. One of the fittings took some persuasion to remove, requiring heat, putty knives, wedges, and finally, twisting with the winch handle. The other fitting came right out. There was little evidence of any caulk on it. That is probably why there was so much mildew in that locker when I removed the tank, as well as regular collection of water in the bilge on that side.

We dug out the balsa core and filled with epoxy thickened with high density filler.

Dry-rotted balsa to be removed

Epoxy filler after removing balsa

The new holding tanks were mounted, hoses connected, and the deck fittings rebedded. We used BoatLife Life Caulk as the bedding compound so that we can remove them in the future, if necessary. (Hopefully not.)

While we were at it, we rebuilt each of the heads, removing calcium buildup, replacing gaskets, valves, and O-rings. Lubrication with Super Lube has made them work much more smoothly than before.

  -Terry

Keeping Those Engines Cool

Ed on Esprit de Mer reminded me as we departed Annapolis that we should be checking the engine mixing elbows where the engine cooling water is mixed with the exhaust gas to keep the exhaust cool. The combination of salt water with hot, corrosive exhaust gas creates an environment that eventually corrodes and clogs the exhaust mixing elbow.

I thought about the possibility and decided that there was a simple experiment that could be done to test whether there was a problem with the water flow through an engine. We took a bucket and held it under the exhaust to collect all the water that came out in a 15 second interval and measured the volume. The stbd engine volume was 1 gallon in 15 seconds, or 4 GPM. The port engine was 1/2 gallon in 15 seconds, or 2 GPM. Quite a difference!

At the next stop, we tore into the cooling system. The raw water impeller was in good shape. We found a couple of old impeller blades in the heat exchanger. The heat exchanger core looked good. The core is easy to remove on the Volvo Penta MD2040D engines, making it easy to check it.

We had not found enough to cause the difference in water flow. What about the water supply? I removed the hose from the sea cock and opened the sea cock. I expected to see a solid flow of water about 2 inches high. But there was a weak flow only about 1/2 inch high. I took a piece of solid house wire and probed through the sea cock. Out popped several large pieces of barnacle shell and the flow increased significantly - to the volume I expected. The photo shows the volume we had after the probing. The volume before was about a half inch high.

[Note: Lengths of house wire is great stuff to use for probing various areas of a boat or to retrieve items from narrow passages - I keep a couple of lengths on board in the tool bag.]

We reassembled everything and the engine now pumps 4 GPM, the same as the stbd engine. So now we have a baseline measurement on the performance of the raw water pumps and mixer elbows on both engines.

  -Terry

Update July 29, 2015: While talking with Alain, I realized that I had not recorded the engine RPM when we measured the water volume. It was while we were under way at cruising speed in the ICW, which is normally 2500-2800RPM.

What We Did On Our Fall Vacation

Terry and Michael keep assuring the crew that our yearly trip to Marsh Harbor is a wonderful vacation for all of us. So, here's what Carol and Mike are doing on their vacation.

Yes, Dear Readers, that would be the two of them hard at work studying Celestial Navigation. It is so true that everyone thinks differently about the definition of vacation. I like Peggy's best.

A Chilly Day on the Water

It's bright and early-- and chilly here between Charleston and Beaufort. As you can see, the crew uniform has changed.

We're back in long pants- everyone, that is, except Michael.

The weather promises to be gray with intermittent showers.

It's still a great view, though!

The End of Another Great Day

Well, the promise of a great day did not hold up. It rained. It rained harder. It rained some more. The good news in all of this is that Mike's repairs on the hatches held up. Nobody's going to bed in a wet bunk tonight. The only hatch that leaked was the one in the port side head. Since it leaked into the shower, it really wasn't an issue.

It didn't rain continuously, though. We did have breaks in the clouds. 

Yes, it was a really great rainbow sighting.

And we had several really great dolphin shows!

Yes, this is a great shot of Peggy trying to get a shot of one of the great dolphin shows. You can barely see the dolphins. You'll just have to take our word for it.

Mike took advantage of the breaks in the rain to wash down the decks. No rinsing required. Mother Nature took care of that.

We ended up in Charleston around 4 PM- too late for the last bridge opening before rush hour. So, we killed time eating cheese and crackers as we waited for the next opening at 6:30 PM.

We were followed through the bridge by a monohull named Nina. Her crew- Nina and Reinhart- came over to visit after dinner. We all had drinks and dessert. It was great having visitors. 

Tomorrow, we head off to Beaufort.

Leaving Georgetown

The rain has stopped. It's looking to be a beautiful morning.