The Hunt for Diesel Fuel

At the time things are going South, you feel like the world is about to end. Inevitability, you wake up the next day and realize it really wasn't that bad after all. As I always say, you only learn from your mistakes. Lots of good lessons learned yesterday and several old ones relearned.

So another day is in the books. The day didn’t start off too promising, but it ended on a high note.

First, I need to backtrack a bit. Yesterday did have many highlights. Clearly we had some issues yesterday at the end, but had we made the lock and gotten to the marina, it was all-in-all a good day. The boat ran perfectly! We had a strong current behind us and we were running around 24 mph. We didn’t have any really long waits at any of the previous locks and the weather was pretty good although a bit windy.

Now on to today’s activities… or really a continuation of yesterday’s fiasco. We finally got to bed around 11:30pm. We were dead dog tired and looking forward to a good night’s sleep. I was brutally awakened by a barge at 3:00 am that decided to roll past us. His wake slammed our doors and practically threw me out of my bunk. Obviously a bit stunned and disoriented, I got my whit’s about me and realized what had happened. No big deal.

Then it hit me. My cabin was really hot and I didn’t notice the light from the A/C unit. Then I realized that the generator was not running and therefore, no A/C. I got up to check it all out. The generator was throwing a code of low water flow. Not thinking much of it since the generator ran perfectly for about 3 hours before we went to bed, I restarted it. It ran fine for about 10 minutes and started to cool the boat back down, so I head back to bed around 3:30 am. I drift off to La-La land and all is well.

I wake up again about 5:00 am no A/C again. I’m too tired to get up and deal with it and the cabin is really not that stuffy, so I go back to sleep. My alarm goes off at 6:00 am and we are up and ready to start a new day. First things first, I go and check the strainer on the generator and it is chock full of sea grass and crap. It was sucking up all kinds of stuff from the river from all the rain we had received the night before. I start the generator and it ran fine. We make coffee and all is well.

At 7:00 we are ready to get going, I start the engines and Clair walks to the bow of the boat to take in the anchor and rode. He looks back at me says there is a bunch of grass on the anchor line. I am now thinking to myself, “Well, just pull the anchor in and it will fall off as you retrieve the line.” He says you need to come look at this. So reluctantly, I walk from the helm to the bow and take a look. HOLLY CRAP! Without exaggerating, we have at least 50 pounds of sea weed on the anchor line. Clair and I look at each other and we both are thinking, how are we going to deal with this. Finally, we grab some boat hooks and start to knock the grass from the line. About 15 minutes later after a good work out, we finally get the anchor up and get underway. So I’m thinking, this day is simply a continuation of the bad “mojo” we had yesterday. The river is running like a ban chi after the rain yesterday and there are all kinds of logs and debris floating on the river. I look at Clair after 15 minutes of running the river and say, “This is going to be a long day.”

So we dodge logs, sticks and floating garbage on the river as we head south praying we don’t hit anything and damage a prop. We get stuck at the first lock for about an hour and half. Typical. We are running through all kinds of weeds all morning long. Around 10:30, I notice the engine temps are creeping up. I ask Clair to run the boat on one engine while I go down and check the sea strainers. Sure enough, the strainers are packed with weeds. We turn off the engines one at a time and clean the strainers. That fixes the problem and the engines are back to running perfectly. Crisis adverted.

I am now focusing on getting our diesel fuel. At 11:30, we finally pull into Landing 615 for our fuel. We start pumping and put 44 gallons in the boat when the pump stops. I ask the dock hand what is going on. He says he thinks the tank is empty. I say it can’t be. I talked to Jamie this morning and told him we needed 220 gallons of fuel and he assured me he had plenty. There must be a mistake.
He said the mistake was mine. The tank was empty. Great! So I have pumped the last 44 gallons of your fuel into my tank. I am now beyond pissed off. I am ready to tear somebody a new one. Again, realizing I am talking to a kid that can’t help, I get on the boat and continue south.

Clair drives while I am calling every marina in the book. I finally reach a very helpful woman in Dubuque, Iowa. She says yep, come on in, we definitely have 250 gallons of diesel for you. I tell her that if I get there and she doesn’t have diesel fuel, they will be reading about me in the newspaper in the morning. She laughed. Then I laughed because she didn’t realize that I was being serious!

We finally got our fuel and that is when our luck finally changed. Every lock after that was empty and we ran right through. We cover another 155 miles today after making 3 stops for fuel and arrive in Clinton, Iowa. Finally, a helpful and knowledge marina with people who are willing to help a fellow boater. We have a great conversation with the dock hands who are very knowledgeable and helpful. We walk up to a nice restaurant with a great bartender and talk to some locals in the marina who are all willing to tell us about the next 200 miles as we travel south. I love the people of Clinton!

Clair and I feel human again. Nice hot showers, a good meal and now ready for a new day. The boat is running great and we think we have now exercised all the demons off the boat and we have nothing but fun and good times ahead. All the same, we will keep our fingers crossed and say a little prayer tonight. Cheers!