Rogue ICW Day 4

Well, you just knew you would have a day like this sooner or later. We had to hang out this morning until the office at Indiantown opened at 8:30 to settle up with them.  After that was taken care of we began loosening the lines and disconnecting shore power.  Went to start the engines. Port side fired up no problem.  Starboard. .. What you want me to turn over? Pushed the start button and nothing, nada, zero happened. Not a grunt, groan, click or sound or movement of any kind. Not a good sign. So Rick and I started troubleshooting. Nothing from the upper helm, nothing from the lower helm.  Jumped the solenoid, yep got power and the starter turned, so not the starter. After four hours of deductive reasoning and testing, rewiring the connectors to the starter relay we hit a brick wall. Just not getting power from the switch to the relay. There was something in the circuit we weren’t thinking of.  So I put in an emergency call to Freddie in St. Petersburg who had done some work on the boat to see if he had any ideas. He didn’t answer so I left what sounded like a panicked message most likely. Since we couldn’t get power to the relay using the existing circuit, we made our own circuit from the starter button to the relay.  Bingo. The engine turned over and we had liftoff.  As we pulled out of the marina Freddie called me back. The first thing he said was “was the transmission in neutral?” Yes the transmission was in neutral, nothing turning there. Then he said “did you check the neutral safety switch?”  Duh!! The missing link. If that switch is a little out of line with the shifter, or sometimes they do go bad, then you have no power pass through to the starter relay.  Well we were already underway, so that will be something we will check when we get a chance later. Essentially we bypassed the switch to get the engine started. Not critical, but need to be sure the trans is in neutral when you start the engine.

Well, we finally got under way about 1:30 after a quick sandwich. We completed the St. Lucie canal and entered the St. Lucie River. Man, there are beautiful homes along the river, and a lot of them have big, I mean big boats parked out front. We made it to the crossroads, where the ICW meets the end of the Okeechobee Water Way.  So we turned north and started the journey up the ICW. We had intended to reach Vero Beach today, but because of the late start, we had to call an audible. We are anchored outside of Ft. Pierce.  Darkness was decending and we anchored as the sunset ensued. Another long day. We had intended to fuel up, do some laundry and get some provisions in Vero Beach, but we will probably have to wait until we get to the Palm Coast area to try to do that. Still might pull over for fuel tomorrow on the way by and pump out.  The target for tomorrow is the NASA anchorage not far from Cape Canaveral, then on to the Palm Coast.  We may be living on peanut butter sandwiches by then.

Statistics for today, 53 miles traveled, 6hrs 17 min. of run time. Total distance traveled 291 miles.

Until then....