Pirates Cove Marina

Day 81

Miles today: 0    Total miles: 2,221.5

Hours today:  0

Locks today: 0.    Total locks: 34

Today's forecast:

We had a productive day today. I cleaned and re-organized a few things, and took advantage of the free laundry facilities here- more on that in a minute. 

Mark changed the impellers on both engines. Impellers are like small turbines- they pull raw water through the heat exchangers to interact with the antifreeze to cool the engines. Then the water goes out through the exhaust system. If the impellers fail, the engines will overheat and burn up. We have heard of impellers disintegrating and sending little pieces of themselves deep into inaccessible engine parts- that would be disastrous. They are pretty darn important and need to be replaced before something like that happens, usually with no warning. The water pumps on both our engines have to be removed to get to the impellers- can't imagine what engineer thought that was a good idea. If the hoses come off easily, the process goes well. Mark batted .500 on that through no fault of his own. Mission accomplished by lunch time. After lunch he changed the oil in both engines. That went pretty well.

Meanwhile I tackled a couple loads of laundry. Since the machines were fairly close by, with no one waiting, and free of charge, I even washed throw rugs. In the last marina where I did laundry, there was a great lounge area with a big screen TV and multiple state of the art machines. It was also $2.50 a load there. That is a lot of quarters!  I still remember doing laundry in college with a few dimes (because I am old) so $2.50 for each machine seems exorbitant. Our current Marina offers free machines, which sounds great. Granted I had to take my cleaning supplies and scrub the tops of the washer and dryer before using them, since they were covered with black dirt. After that, it was fine. But I'm thinking this outdoor arrangement would not work well in Iowa!