1.8 miles to go

Ok, so with 1.8 miles to go, we ran out of fuel. Floating in the main industrial channel of Mobile Bay. We were able to get the engine started one last time and motored to a massive bollard where the big ships tie to for loading and unloading. As I approached Jackson was ready with the line. I was approaching slowly and as I eased into reverse the engine died. Our bow anchor hit dead center on the piling. Very scary but slow and no damage. Jackson secured us to the piling. We called tow boat to bring us 10 gallons of diesel. I’m pretty suspicious of our starboard tank right now because it appears to have 3.5 inches of fuel (10 ish gallons). Feeling a bit deflated and defeated but we are safely tied and waiting for our fuel. Seriously wishing I had that extra jerry can I mentioned in the previous post.

Sometimes we make mistakes

We lost fuel pressure about 20 miles from our destination. I was surprised because I was pretty certain we had 12 gallons in the port tank and at least 13 in the starboard tank. We floated down the debris filled river for 10 minutes and I seriously thought for a minute we had no fuel in either tank. Jack had the idea to dip my folding ruler into each tank we discovered that the starboard tank did have about 3 inches of fuel, roughly 10 gallons. We decided to run at 8 kts where we burn only .6 gallons per hour. We are about 50 minutes from our destination sober from lessons learned: 1. When you have opportunity to fill up on gas, do it. 2. Take route planning seriously even on a boat. 3. While fuel gauges are not really possible in this boats current configuration, I plan to set up a fuel totalizer that adds up fuel flow between fill ups. 4. You can’t use every drop in a tank, especially in turbulent water. If your tank is 40 gallons, consider the last 10 percent unusable for route planning. 5. Keep a spare 5 gallon Jerry can of diesel and be prepared to run slow to get maximum mileage if this occurs. On the positive side, it’s good to have some oh shit moments when they can be resolved safely.

Chipping away the miles.

I think we are all ready for a pool and a shower.

On to Mobile

Just a few notes. Bobby’s Fish camp is definitely an interesting place but the current owner (I’ve heard it’s Bobby’s brother) is a gruff inhospitable guy. Also, the coffeeville lock and dam doesn’t have their phone number published properly and they aren’t very good on the radio. Anyhoo. It’s early and we are again in lock purgatory as we wait for an upstream barge to complete. Looking forward to the beach.