10/11/2014 - Saturday - Turner Marine to The Wharf Marina

At 7:00 AM the installation of Al and Kay's new muffler started and everything went smoothly.  Soon their boat was up and running and we were ready to finalize our marina tab around 9:30 AM.  The plan was to get fuel and start our new adventure up the Tenn Tom but the owner of Turner Marine put a damper on that plan.  He said that they were expecting some heavy rain up around the top of the Tenn Tom so we may want to wait a few days and watch for the downstream current.  When they get heavy rain, there can be as much as a 3 knot current coming downstream.  That's not good for us so we needed to rethink our plan.  Once back at the boat we took a look at the weather and he was right so we made the decision to join the other two boats at The Wharf for a few days.

Bye bye Turner Marine

Dredge in the Mobile Ship Channel

What a beautiful day on the water!  It was calm with a light breeze and within three or so hours we rejoined our fellow two boats.

Dolphins jumping and swimming on the side of our boat

U.S. Coast Guard fly by

RV Park and LuLu's

Another restaurant on the ICW just pass LuLu's

M/V Cambria rocking and rolling after this fishing boat passed them.  He did try to not give us a wake but these fishing boats are not made for inland waters!

Someone is building a party barge!

The Wharf, here we come!

During this trip Josh tested our overheating problem to see if it was fixed.  NOT!  He throttled up to 2000 rpm and the boat was fine.  He throttled up a little more (2100) and we noticed a little smoke coming out the exhaust.  Maybe we were just cleaning it out!  All of a sudden we started hearing a beep, then another beep, but we thought it was on the radio.  Josh said "that's not us - is it"?  I was not sure so he throttled up to 2200 rpm and the alarm went off full blast.  The exhaust was really putting out smoke.  Josh pulled the throttle back and let the engine settle down.  Our problem is not solved!  The boat likes running at 1800 rpm, so that's where we stayed until we had a chance to check things out.  Josh call my sister's boyfriend Frank and discussed the situation.  Thank you Frank!  Josh now has some more options to check out tomorrow.

At 5:30 PM we all headed to a restaurant for dinner together.  What a great reunion!!!

10/10/2014 -Friday - Turner Marine

The muffler guy showed up around 7:15 AM and took the muffler out of Al and Kay's boat.  Not good news!  The muffler has several cracks in it and, not repairable - they need a new one.  On the phone they went looking to see if they could find one and to see how fast it could be shipped here to Turner Marine.  Good news! They found one and it's in Georgia!  Josh said that part of Georgia is not that far and it would probably be cheaper to rent a car, drive and get it than to have it shipped. Road trippin' here we go!  Nine hours later and Al and Kay have a brand new muffler!!!!

Tomorrow morning the mechanic will be at Al and Kay's boat.  During this time we will head over to the fuel dock to fuel up. If the installation goes smoothly, and there are no more problems we may head out starting our new adventure tomorrow.

The people at Turner Marina are so friendly and helpful.  Great place for stopping!!!!

This was beside the first boat on the transit dock.  Very interesting (TV) contraption!!!!

10/9/2014 - Thursday - Turner Marine Boat Repair Day

We started off the day using the marina courtesy car that Susan scheduled us to use before they decided not to come this way.  Some marinas have courtesy cars that they let transients use to run errands.  All you had to do with this one was to make sure it was full of gas when you returned it.  The car did not look bad but as Kay, Josh and I headed to the big West Marine our first stop, Josh almost put us through the front windshield!  The brakes were very touchy and the steering was very loose!  They do have a West Marine Express at the marina next door but they did not have the impeller that Josh needed.  While we were there I found a great deal on some clothes.  After West, we headed to Wal-Mart to get a tire pump and some food items.

Once back at the boat we had lunch and then Josh started working on our overheating problem.  He replaced the impeller and cleaned seaweed out of the strainer line.  Let's hope this takes care of the problem!  

Al and Kay had a couple of things needing fixing or checking out.  The first thing was the A/C unit and that was fixed the first day we arrived.  The second was for a guy to look at an engine mount to make sure everything was OK.  If it's not one thing, it's another!  While he was down in the engine room he noticed a water leak in the muffler.  He was going to try to come yesterday to fix it but was tied up with another job so it will be first thing tomorrow morning.

10/8/2014 - Wednesday - Biloxi to Turner Marine, Mobile, AL

Departure time was 6:30 AM and the water was smooth as glass.  A great day for open water!!!!

As we were motoring along, Al said he was going to do a "speed run" so Josh said he would do a "Phil Geren speed run" also!  We call it a Phil Geren speed run because two years ago while traveling with several boats, Phil Geren on M/V Awesome One would do a speed run several times each day. This was a 10-15 minute run at a higher (2000-2100) RPM to keep the engine running well (suggested by Cummins after several hours of 1600-1800 RPM motoring) He would get us all on the radio and inform us he was doing to do this. So it's now been named in his honor!  As we started doing this our temperature gauge spiked and our alarm went off.  This was not good!!!!!  We slowed back down and the temperature went back to normal.  No more speed runs for us today!  Josh will work on this problem once we get to Turner Marine.

M/V Cambria doing their speed run wanting to be in front for a little while!

Every once in a while we would see dolphins, but not like we did two years ago.

Did you see that Boston Whaler?  (look closely!) This is the same model and size that we have at home and these people are taking it out to one of the islands!  Not sure we would do something like that!  Between islands we were having swells on the beam and the wind on the nose.  This was very interesting because we kept thinking "where is the ship creating these waves?"

A large Coast Guard plane decided to do several "fly bys".  That was a great sight to see!  I did miss a good shot because I was below making lunch and did not think they would fly by again.

 

Thank you Susan for the picture!

As we exited the Dauphin Island Bridge, Susan and Jerry on M/V La Vie Dansante headed off to the Wharf in Alabama to hang out until we start our return trip back to Texas.  Shortly after that, Linda called on S/V Agoode Ketch to tell us that they have decided to head to the Wharf also.  They plan to keep heading on to Pensacola, FL.  The two Tenn-Tom boats are still heading on to Turner Marina to get ready for our new adventure!

As we were heading up the Mobile ship channel we saw a Coast Guard helicopter over the water by Fairhope and we think they were practicing rescue because a diver jumped into the water.

This structure was sitting out in the open water.  At first I thought it was an abandoned lighthouse with the light removed but as we went by it appeared to now be a weather station.

Dolphins love jumping in a ship's bow wave but it is very difficult to get good pictures.  If you look closely, I got part of the dolphin!

As we were getting closer to our turnoff for Turner Marine there was a dredge working and blocking about half the channel.  An oncoming ship called us on the radio to communicate that he was going to meet the dredge at the same time we were and he would "see us on the one" (Landlubber explanation - port side to port side).  After thinking about it, Josh looked up the boat name on our AIS to call him back and said "are you kidding me"  "I can't call this boat by this name".  He finally called "M/V DINKELDIEP" on the radio to tell him that we would hang back on our side of the dredge until he came through.  He was a very nice Captain, but we can sure think of better names for a ship!

Turner Marine, here we come!