We started our day looking out into a nice
calm bay with several boats at anchorage. The first picture is our back yard this
am just at dawn.
What started out as a beautiful calm day quickly turned into a
bit of a pain in the butt for Jim. The fan belt on the port engine (which we
still affectionately call the bitch) broke about 5 min into our trip. Jim went
to the engine room and changed it, but said "I'm not really confident in
it." The belt was hanging above the engine since we bought the boat. Obviously
placed there by the previous owner as a spare. However It looked worn and
brittle. Jim was right....again...don't tell him I said so. Within about 5 min
this second belt broke as well. Back down he goes. He found another spare, but
the alternator bolts would not budge. For those of you who don't know, the
alternator tilts forward, to allow room to put the belt on, then you tilt it
back to tighten the belt. This alternator would not budge. He got the belt on
by prying it with a screw driver over the pulley, but there was a bit of a
twist, where the belt did not want to fall into it's track. When he came back
up; dripping in sweat; he said "well it's fixed but there's a twist in the belt.
It will probably work itself out as the belt spins but I'll have to tighten it
some after it does." About 2 hrs later the
engine started to overheat again. The second belt broke. He attempted to put a
third belt on, but the same issue occurred and it promptly broke. To his credit
Jim did not curse until the third belt. Well at least not that I heard.
We are traveling with several boats and we
called them all to let them know we were down to one engine and would be slow.
Sherri and Randy quickly came on and said, everyone else go on ahead and we
will stay with them at reduced speed as their buddy boat. The other 2 trawlers
came on and said, they would remain with us as well. Then the boys are calling
out, wanting to know the size of the belt, to see if they had spares. Randy
offered to come on over to give Jim a hand. It was an incredibly nice feeling
to have so many people looking out for us and doing what they could to help.
Nicer still to know that none of them would leave our side, just in case we
needed more help. Burk said we had taken on a marine mentality. Leave no man
behind! Sherri then piped in, that the scenery was beautiful on the Cumberland
and a slower ride would benefit us all. She was right, the scenery was
beautiful. As the pictures below and above will attest. The cows certainly loved to be in
the water.
There has been flooding here as well,
although the water levels are down now. Check out the roots on those trees on
the bank. They will be the next dodge the log contestants, but fortunately we
will not be in the river for the next flooding.
The river
is a beautiful winding river, however there was one Quarry along the way, to
break up the pristine view. I wonder if my nephew Joel would like to be driving
that dump truck?
Despite our setbacks, we still got here at
1 pm and got to enjoy the beauty of the Green Turtle Bay Marina. This Marina is Huge. The picture below accounts for about 1/5th of the slips. They are Looper
sponsors and tonight happened to be their Looper appreciation BBQ. We had BBQ'ed mouton,
BBQ'ed port, baked beans, chips and coleslaw. All free for loopers. So this did
not turn out so bad after all. Jim has called NAPA auto and they will have 3 belts
ready for him in the am. So we will stay here for 2 nights. The next leg of our
trip will have us anchoring for the next 6 nights so we need to provision and
make sure we have all the supplies we need to make it through to Rogersville
for our Rendezvous.
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