Stats:
A few miles... A couple away from Green Turtle Marina and a couple towed back.
We did some shopping, completed our maintenance items: an impeller change (just precautionary, because it hadn't been done since we've owned the boat and we wanted to make sure it was okay), an oil leak fix (minor), filter change and fuel line bleed. We were good to go... we thought.
We got a few miles out and suddenly, out of the blue, our engine temperature started to climb. It had never done that before and, um, that was what the new impeller was supposed to prevent! It got hot enough that we had to turn it off to prevent serious damage and there we were, in the middle of a narrow channel between the two lakes (Barkley/Kentucky), right under the bridge and drifting towards one of the bridge standards. Quick action was required. I used the bow thruster to fend us off as best I could while Jeff put the dingy down and hopped in. We quickly tied a tow rope up and between our "Georgian Bay 9.9" Yamaha pulling us and the bow thruster fighting the wind to keep us straight, Jeff was able to inch us away from danger. That is until I turned around and saw a tow barge turning into the channel.
It was an "exciting" few moments but it all turned out okay. We contacted the tow and he was actually just repositioning his load and was NOT heading our way as it appeared. After changing our undergarments we contacted BoatUS and they came out to get us, again.
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Here's Jeff and our valiant "Georgian Bay 9.9" towing us to safety. |
So we spent the day back at the marina working with the maintenance staff trying to diagnose the problem. It seemed obvious to us that the first place to look was the new impeller but they seemed sure that wasn't the problem. Jeff is working away on it now, trying to make sense of it. A thermostat?
It was a cold, rainy day anyway so it was a good day to be tied up with our electric heater plugged in but a bother nevertheless. We want to get going.
Ugh. Mechanical problems.
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