On Tue, 21 Apr 2015 12:46:23 -0400, "Flying Pig"
wrote:

Shake and Break, part 3

My apologies for the double posting of part 2. Internet here offshore at
Green Turtle Cay, our first connection of any quality, is so slow that it
lost my completion signal, thus thinking that it hadn't been sent. The
second posting went before I was aware that the first had made it...

We left you as we were headed for the fuel dock to top up our water and
gasoline, and pay the remainder of the time we'd stayed after our original,
aborted, departure.

We'd been on the ball for a couple of weeks following insertion of our speed
impellers. Those are small paddlewheels which tell our instruments how fast
we're moving through the water. If you leave them in without moving
significantly, which would make them turn, at least in Vero Beach, they're
quickly fouled with marine growth, and won't turn. It's good practice to
remove them when you're going to be immobile for any significant amount of
time, replacing them with plugs and, if needed doing some cleanup to assure
free movement when they're replaced again.

Why use the speed impellers at all? As you say, you need to pull then
every time that you stop and plug the holes and what benefit are they,
actually. If you are like most cruisers you have the GPS on all the
time anyway. On a racing boat speed through the water is helpful in
sail trimming but on a cruiser it is a bit different. One often
selects a heading that is "more comfortable" rather then technically
the most effecient and on a trip where you are at the end of the day
is the important fact, not what your speed log read during the day.

I might comment that a good friend who completed a circumnavigation a
years ago has no impellers on his boat at all :-0

Re leaking raw water pumps. They leak so frequently that one might
almost say that it is "normal". I replaced them on several boats with
a bronze centrifugal pump, driven off the front crankshaft pulley,
with what one might call "sparkling success" as I had no problems with
one for 10 years, or more :-)

A solution I've seen that works with apparent success and completely
eliminates the raw water pump is the use of a keel cooler which, if I
were building a new boat I believe that I would look at very closely.


As is good practice, we have our VHF radio on, tuned to the emergency
channel. As we motor down the ICW (Intra-Coastal Waterway) toward Ft.
Pierce, we hear the usual chatter traffic, moving off to working channels.
Chillingly, however, we also hear an announcement from the USCG relating to
extraction of a sunken barge in the Ft. Pierce Inlet.

Isn't a rule that one is supposed to monitor channel 16? Or is that
only for "big Boats"? It is certainly used in international waters as
the calling and emergency channel and any time I've called another
vessel or shore station they were monitoring it and has answered.
--
Cheers,

Bruce