Spent the night on Walkabout. Jay and Barbara invited me and Zsanic to stay on their boat while we were up in southport instead of staying on La Bon Vie. Being a bigger boat and with less people spread out it was nice. 🙂 also the air conditioning didn’t hurt.
We helped Jay bring Walkabout to the fuel dock in the morning but had issues with the prop. He just about didn’t have any maneuverability because of the oyster and barnacle growth on the 3 bladed prop. The water is very clean compared to the Cokina Harbor back in little river so I volunteered to go look at the prop after we got to the fuel dock. It was bad. There was about one inch of solid oysters on each side of all the blades. Instead of pushing the boat forward as the blades cut through the water it was more like the prop was a rough club just beating the water. We couldn’t find a decent scraper so jay handed down the stainless barbecue spatula. It actually worked better than any other scraper I have ever tried to use. The big long handle gave you a good grip and allowed you to keep your hands farther away from the oysters, and the big spatula end did a great job of scraping the oysters and barnacles off and stood up the the hard pounding of driving it along the blades and against the hard shells. Afterward the difference in maneuvering and handling was amazing.
After cleaning the prop we took a quick run up the waterway and back but had overheating issues with the engine. The boat hadn’t been out of the slip in about a month as Jay had been doing a lot of projects and repairs on her and he had turned off the through hull to the raw water cooling system. Diesel engines will over heat if run with that turned off. After the temp alarm went off we turned the engine off and quickly anchored in the side of the waterway. It only took a little bit to figure out what had happened. It really brings home the need for 1. a working temp alarm and 2. a check list for cranking the engine that includes checking the thru hulls. It’s easy to forget you closed the thru hull a month earlier to do some maintenance when normally you don’t do so.
After all the excitement me and Zsanic went over to the provisioning company and reported in to La Bon Vie. The race was pretty intense.. not in a it was a close race way but in a it was a hard race. The course was in the cape fear river and we fought strong currents all day that we had to tack back and forth up the river to fight. I was exhausted by the end of the day and my arms felt like they were going to fall off. We came in 8th when all was said and done. The sailing was great but we definately had crew friction during the day that detracted from the occasion. Even so we still had a good time.
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