We left Cocoa Beach in the morning. There was little if any wind, and the water was glassy. The building below is I believe part of the NASA launch facility. It is miles away, so it is much bigger than it seems in this picture. We need to try and do the tour there on the way back.
We plugged along north under bridges, and then entered what is called Mosquito Lagoon. It was still mid afternoon and hot, so the mosquitoes were not out in force, but there were lots of bugs, big ones. There were also lots of manatees, mostly because we were in the middle of nowhere.
I was driving (why do most of the unintentionally interesting stories start that way?) and I heard a slight change in the tone of the engine. I started looking around and saw that we were no longer belching out water from the engine exhaust. A glance at the temperature gauge showed it was above 200°F and still moving higher.
I yelled for Heather to come up and drive, and we drove out of the ditch to the lagoon alongside. We oozed to a stop in the thick mud while I got the anchor out, then we quickly turned off the engine. The overtemp alarm hadn't gone off but it would have within seconds. We had turned into what little wind there was, and it was enough to slowly unground us from the muck, but at the cost of drifting closer to the ditch, which still had a fair amount of traffic. The hook set and we stopped right at the edge. Not too bad for an emergency drill.
Since we were far from much of anything we would probably not be able to get a tow today, which meant spending the night here. It was not appealing to wait for dusk and the namesake creatures to come out and play. I went below to try and figure out what was going on. The water pump had less than 50 hours on it. The most common issue with no raw water flow is a broken impeller, which is a little rubber waterwheel shaped thing that drives the seawater thru the pump. I took off the cover and the impeller seemed new, which is was. Okay, upstream or downstream.
I looked guiltily at the raw water strainer which I had never cleaned. I took off the lid, but other than a few twigs, some strands of sea grass and a little algae the basket looked pretty good. I cleaned it anyway with a small brush and put it back. I took off the intake hose and could blow bubbles underneath the boat, so no water intake clogged with a grocery bag or jellyfish or whatever. Water could get to the pump. Maybe the exhaust elbow for the engine was clogged, similar to the generator. I could blow in the exit hose freely, so nothing stopping water from proceeding downstream.
I asked Heather to turn over the engine while I watched the pump. The weep hole that was leaking on the old pump also allows you to see the shaft turning in the pump. The shaft wasn't turning even though the engine was. All I could think of to do is pull off the new pump and slide on the old pump. Better leaky than nothing at all.
Heather started the engine with the old pump on it. We were spitting water out of the exhaust again, and the engine temperature was back down where it should be. The old pump was still slowly leaking but should get us to our next stop - New Smyrna Beach, home of Bob Ross. That guy's soothing patter while he painted could put me to sleep in record time.
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