In Pensacola now and almost back to our original schedule. The Looper admonition keeps ringing in my mind: you can pick the place or the time but neither both. I guess we’ve benefited from conservative planning and better than expected traveling conditions.
The run across Mobile Bay was beautiful in the early morning light. GPS waypoints put me right into the GICW where local knowledge said I should intersect. Heading east through some of the narrows got us into gorgeous inland bays with cypress and pine trees on the inland shore and the whitest sand on the Gulf side. Passing Ono Island, we recalled a fun weekend we had with the Whitfield’s and saw the shrimp shack from where Whitty and I bought a huge amount of shrimp from local shrimpers. The colors of sea, land and sky are beautiful. And the salt air tells us “We’re here!”, finally!
Our excitement was amplified with the sounding of an engine alarm as we idled our way up Chico Bayou, almost to our marina. I had to shut down the starboard engine to silence the alarm. In the meantime, commercial traffic was moving around us and a steady north wind pushing us out of the channel. Barbara is working the cell phone getting instructions into the narrow entry fairway and I’m on the radio warning nearby boats I have limited navigation capabilities.
I limped in on one engine and after several attempts backing into the slip with no success, I turned her around and put her in bow first, figuring at this point any tie up is a good tie up. After getting situated I checked the owner’s manual for the default code. Solution? Shut down and restart both engines! Re-boot the engines!! It worked! However, with the engine room hatch opened I noticed I wasn’t getting raw water flow in the starboard engine - bad impeller? With help from the dockmaster, I contacted a local boat mechanic and trouble shot it. Conclusion- bad impeller(s) (if one goes bad it’s likely the other engine’s impeller will go, too). So, I’m to have both impellers changed today! Is this a great world or what?! If successful we’ll head out tomorrow for San Destin.
Ate last night with a slip mate at “The Oar House” - incredibly great shrimp tacos.