We left at 7:15 from The Great Bridge and started
motoring. We met up with a boat, Carousel, who was in front of us. As they
approached a bridge that said 64 feet they were going really slow but it
knocked off their wind vane on a cable that was dangling a little below the
bridge where they were doing construction. They were 63ft 3in. We went
through fine but the workers lifted the line. One of them yelled down to us
that we cleared by a couple feet. We stopped and exhanged numbers and they
called the coast guard. Later in the day there was a bridge that was 65
feet but they opted to stay and a marina just short of the bridge over the
canal saying they were gun shy. Some of the wakes from power boats are
severe and some are not. It seems that faster is actually easier to deal
with than slow. The wakes are displacing less water when they are up on a
plane. I told several guys to keep their speed up and come around. Our
deep keel helps a lot but the cuts are narrow so there is not much room for
turning to cross the wake at 90 deg. Every time we go under a bridge we
come to less than 1 knot and drift under the bridge at less than a walking
pace. The weather has been great and we're getting a nice tan all of us.
After we anchored at Lutz creek I started messing with the electronics.
This is drive me nuts!!! We can't start the engine unless we start the
generator first and charge the batteries. So I removed the panel behind the
aft head mirror and started trying to figure out what is going on.
In the process of tracing everything I found that when the Marina in
Pasadena did the work on the transmission they lifted the engine to replace
an engine mount. In that process apparently they removed the ground lug on
the side of the engine. It was completely loose. So I tightened that up.
I also found the actuator lever on the throttle was loose so I tightened
that up and then I found the wires that were broken for the black water pump
were off and tightened them up as well. I left the wiring open because I
still can't figure out how the motor is ever supposed to charge the house
batteries. I can't make that work at all unless I put the starting battery
selector in parallel. Then the engine drags down and charging occurs. I
cannot keep it in that position. I think that needs to be a real switch not
a momentary one. I didn't get things buttoned up till after 22:00.
