Green Turtle, day four

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Stats:    Zero

It was the impeller.  Jeff was exactly right.  It was not installed properly and was not functioning at all.  As I understand it:  there is this thing called a "woodruff key" and it became displaced when the mechanic put the impeller in, so the impeller was just sitting there with the shaft spinning around inside of it and no cooling water at all was being moved.  Oopsie.

It's a machine. Stuff happens.  I understand that.  But I am kind of disappointed that the service department gave us a bit of a run around.  It seems to me the FIRST thing they should have said was "Let us double check that the impeller we just installed is working properly."  They didn't.  They tried very hard to convince us that the impeller was just fine and it was the heat exchanger or a thermostat etc. etc.

If a customer didn't have the background in mechanics that Jeff does they could have easily, and may have, replaced many more parts, spending much more money.  Luckily, Jeff does have that background and he was able to demonstrate to them that the impeller was not functioning at all.

They sent another guy over and he was great! With Jeff observing and learning the mechanic replaced the impeller and did it properly, professionally and double-checked his work.  Great!  They repaired it and did not charge us for the dockage for the additional time while the mis-repair was rectified. (Although, we did have to insist on that.)

All in all, sh!t happens, the problem is resolved and we are satisfied with the results.

So now we're good to go.  First thing in the morning.

This a wall of murals showing
the history of the area

The rest of the afternoon was spent in the town of Paducah, Kentucky.  We signed out one of the courtesy cars again and went in to check out the River Museum that we've heard so many good things about with Mike and Marian from the boat Midas Touch.

It was indeed good.  Lots of interesting information, history and models of locks etc.  But the best part was the simulator.  They have this little room with screens all around.  You can choose a simulation of a tow with barges, a power boat or a coast guard vessel and you get to pretend drive.  It's a blast!  The weirdest thing is, because you are surrounded by screen, when the boat tilts to the side it REALLY feels like the whole room is moving.  I had to sit down and watch the floor to make sure it wasn't moving because it really felt like it was!  We had great fun with that.

Susan chose to drive a Coast Guard
Boat.  We were worried that they would
take away the keys to the boat if we screwed
up, but we both did fine.

Jeff, driving a barge.   Despite our best cheering for him to
slam something he didn't hit a thing!

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