Sooooo, the engine "maintenance" ended up being much, much more than expected. And it wasn't "maintenance" at all. Not in the least bit, unfortunately a bit worse.
As we left our last anchorage at the confluence of the Ohio River and the Mississippi River at Cairo, having chosen to follow our friend Mick down the Mighty Miss, we were underway for several hours, as we heard a weird noice coming from our engine, like changing pitch...
Nick went down into the engine room immediately to check to see what was going on.
At first it appeared we were running low on fuel from one side of our tanks, so he switched the fuel tanks over and went upstairs to measure how much we had used and might have left, as the engine started sounding even worse, so we were forced to shut her off immediately.
We tried to start her up again after a couple minutes, when we realized that the temperature was way off the gauge. An overheating problem??
Nick went back to check on the engine, and noticed it had seized!
Oh oh,....
We are now dead in the water, with our engine that just quit on us, on the mighty, vast Mississippi River with a lot of tow/tug and barge traffic, and a 4 knot current pushing us!
We called our friend Mick on the radio who was cruising ahead at about 11/12knots (20-22 kmh) to inform him of our dilemma to possibly come back for us, and the friend he's become, he turned right around and just like that, we got "joined at the hip, at tow!
And we stayed that way for two days, for almost 250 miles! ( ca.400 km
Until we got to Memphis Tennessee!
During our two day journey attached at the "hip", Nick spend the entire two days in the engine room, disassembling it, trying to figure out what on earth would have caused a complete engine shutdown, failure. What went wrong.
Yes, I know, he really wanted to go down the Mississippi River, and that's why we chose coming down it, however he didn't think he'd spent it in the engine room for two full days!
And here we are, in Memphis Tennessee, working on an engine that decided she had had enough for a while and quit. Again, our friend Mick by our side, literally.
As Mick knows a lot of people doing this Great Circle Loop for about 6 times now, he set us up with a friend of his, managing this marina, Joe, who is taking real good care of us here.
We spent the last two days together here at the Marina, both guys brainstorming and working on the engine, while I had the chance to go get some food at the local Market, do some laundry and fill us up with water.
This morning Mick left, on his own, a sad goodbye, almost like you have the feeling a very good friend that you might never see again, as he is headed East and we eventually West....
....and so here we are, to stay, until we get our engine fixed.