SailThreeSheets.com

December 28 - 8:00AM Today is my sister’s birthday!  I called my sister, and I sang her a silly birthday song on her voicemail and then called my folks.  I made up some breakfast and some coffee, and Brian set to work on the engine.  I did some tidying up, and handed Brian a few tools, which unfortunately is about as much help as I can be when it comes to the engine.  At about 11:30 Brian called his Dad to see if Mike might have any suggestions.  We changed out the coolant, and we tried to do an oil change but the oil was too cool to siphon through the pump system.  At noon, we decided to give it a shot and see if the engine was any happier, and pulled anchor and headed back down the ICW to Barefoot Landing, about 20 Statute Miles away, but an area with more resources, and the closest point that we could put in at.  About 5 miles in, white smoke.  Bah.  We kept the engine speeds low, and putted our way down the ICW.  Happily I can report that there were no groundings at all along this stretch, which is doubly good because the area that was reported as having shoaling wasn’t our “friendly” sand shoaling, but rocky outcroppings… yikes! Happily, we made it easily to Barefoot landing, with the help of a couple of favorable openings from the bridge operators at Little River Bridge and the Barefoot Landing Swing Bridge, and we pulled up to the Barefoot Landing Docks at about 4:20 PM, where we were able to tie up so that we could continue to sort out the engine issue.  I helped Brian with changing the oil, which was my first oil change experience ever! This time, thankfully, because the oil was heated up, it came out easily, and Brian was able to complete the oil change with no issues!  We tested a few things that Brian had thought of and that Mike had suggested in their conversation (well really Brian tested, I turned the engine on and off at his direction, and lo and behold, he ID’d the issue, we weren’t pumping water through the salt water coolant system.  He’d already checked a few other components of this system, but when he got to the impeller, he found that three teeth had sheared off! AHA!!!  We decided that we’d wait on getting a bite to eat until after we’d finished changing the impeller, and see if that was the sole source of our issues.  About 45 minutes later, new impeller installed we fired up the engine and waited…  NO WHITE SMOKE HOORAY!!!  We shut her down, and closed up the boat and walked over to Tbonz to grab a burger and a tase of their microbrew.  We toasted Brian’s success in getting the engine to be happy again, and set our plans for the next day, a 5:30-6:00 AM start and a 60 mile journey to Georgetown where we’d meet up with John and Pat, and hopefully be able to jump out at the Winyah Sound on Tuesday and head out to the Atlantic and from there to Charleston.