The Jersey Shore

I just passed Barnegat Bay heading north along the New Jersey coastline.  Not much of a view.

It is however a nice day for the trip.  Calm.

I got underway Friday about 0930 from Norfolk and arrived in Atlantic City about 1000 on Saturday.  I had allowed 24-30 hours for the trip, with an estimated distance of 220 miles.i  I was very tired on arrival and slept almost continuously from 1100 until 0630 today.

The trip wasn’t entirely uneventful.  I started having cooling issues shortly after passing the causeway coming out of the Chesapeake.  The raw water flow was stopping suddenly, and engine coolant temperature would start to climb. 

My response to this was to put the engine in neutral and go to about 2000 rpm until the pumping started again, and all would be good, but I had it happen a few times in the space of an hour.

It was pretty choppy at that point with the current running out of the Chesapeake.  I stopped and checked the raw water strainer and did a quick inspection elsewhere, and all seemed to be in order.  Got tossed around enough while drifting to decide to carry on to calmer conditions to replace the impeller.

At about 1600 I stopped at an inlet along the Delaware shore.  It was a little nerve wracking heading in across the unmarked inlet bar, but I found shelter to drop anchor and enact repairs.  Pulled the water pump and replaced the impeller.  One vane had torn off, but the rest were largely intact.

The issue hasn’t been fully resolved.  I had it reoccur several times after getting underway again, but I pressed on keeping a close eye on the temperature gauge, and had to reprime the pump several times by going to high rpms in neutral briefly.

This morning I had full flow on startup, and after puzzling over it and looking at it running decided to get underway to hit the weather/daylight window.  Have had to reprime it twice today in 5 hours of travel.

My current diagnosis is that there is a restriction in the transmission cooler, which is on the supply side of the water pump.  I’ll disassemble and inspect when I get to NY.

My destination today in Great Kills Harbor.  I remember that as a good stopping point from my trip north five years ago.  I’m ready to stop for a bit.  Need to fix this issue and do some shore-based tasks like laundry. 

The only picture I took was of a sub and escorts inbound near the causeway.  I kept my distance as instructed.