Sunday, May 4, 2014

Just Call Him MacGyver


Just Call Him MacGyver

Today was a planned “down” day. We knew the canal was not going to be open until tomorrow, so we took today to make any final adjustments from our maiden voyage up the Hudson River. We came across a few minor things yesterday that needed to be repaired so it worked out perfectly for us to fix those items today.

Knowing the boat was not going to move today, I took the opportunity to sleep in this morning not getting out the rack until about 7:45. Not Daryl… he was up and at it bright and early. By the time I got up, Daryl had already knocked out most of the punch list. The boat had a port fuel gauge that did not work. It was reading 100% full the entire trip yesterday. We also had an alarm go off on the port motor mid-day yesterday indicating that the alternator was not charging. MacGyver, I mean Daryl, had both of these things fixed before I got up.

Daryl had traced out the wiring to the fuel sending unit and fixed it. He also found a bad connection on the port engine alternator that needed to be fixed. He had the dash apart and was checking all the connections on the autopilot as well. This was all done before 8:00am. Daryl is a very smart guy and knows his way around a tool box.

We had one other problem with a pulsing water pump that we have not gotten to the bottom of yet. We worked on that until about 9:30 before we decided it was best to leave that until we got the boat home. At that point Daryl decided it was time to walk to town and have a nice breakfast.

We walk about 4 blocks to a little hole in the wall place that was packed full of locals. We both had a great ham & cheese omelet. After a refill on the coffee, we decided we would continue our walk in search of an auto parts store for some spare 15W-40 engine oil. The walk was great, but unproductive as we did not find the oil we needed. I came back to the boat to work on dockage and fuel for tomorrow and Daryl took a 5 mile bus ride to the other side of town to an Advance Autoparts store for the oil.

We are now all set for the rest of our trip. The long-term weather forecast is looking great so far, so we are very hopeful we will be able to complete the trip without any further delays.

Below are a few more pictures from the first lock on the Erie Canal and the boat sitting at the Waterford, NY town docks.







 

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