Five Islands - Fort Pierce, Florida 20th to 22nd June 2016, 27:27.05N 080:19.22W

Fort Pierce, Florida 20th to 22nd June 2016, 27:27.05N 080:19.22W

Five Islands

John & Sue

Tue 12 Jul 2016 13:59

A morning of excitement or perhaps stress is a better word for it. Firstly the wind was 15kts on our beam at 0745 when we pulled into the fuel dock making it an interesting exercise to try and tie up. That done we headed back through and under the 3 bridges with a building current. We retraced our steps back down the river to the ‘crossroads’ to continue a journey. As we turned north into the ICW with the current again strong and against us and 18kt wind on the nose, the Port engine again spluttered to a stop. Over the past several days I had been thinking about what to do if this situation happened again and was heading toward the bow to deploy the anchor when John informed me that the starboard engine was still operating so we could continue under this one engine while he cleared the blockage again. We continued on at snail pace against the wind and current. We fired up the Port engine again after about 10 minutes (John was getting the unblocking process down pat). All went well for 3 hours when the Starboard engine spluttered, coughed and stopped. John cleared that and we continued on but we knew we had an issue that would need to be sorted out in Fort Pierce. The wind continued to be 15 to 20kts all day with overcast conditions and intermittent showers. We had made a booking at the Ft Pierce Municipal Marina and of course when we arrived we had strong current and 15kt winds. We had another difficult dock but Freddy was there to help.

The Fort Pierce Marina.

View looking north. The marina is protected by spoil islands ringing the outside which cuts down the impact of wakes from boats on the ICW but doesn’t have too much effect on the current flow.

We organised for Kevin from ‘Tanknicians’ to come and polish our fuel the next morning. They bought a high flow vacuum pump which sucks the fuel out of the tank passes it through 3 filters and is then pumped back into the deck fill point where it enters the fuel tank and is sucked out again. The fuel entering the tank is supposed to swirl therefore dislodging any gunk/slim/algae which is then sucked up and filtered from the fuel before it returns again. After 30 mins we took the return line out of the fill point and inserted it directly into the tank targeting the areas where we could see black gunk and circulated for another hour.

Kevin suggested we use a product called AJX Tank Cleaning System to kill off what ever was left in the tank. This product was available from Stuart and Colin Mack (Mack Sails) was good enough to organise for one of his people to pick it up and deliver it to us in Ft Pierce. We also purchased the tank maintenance system additive and will dose the tank when we leave the boat for the hurricane season.

Mack Sails came and took measurements for our new main sail, which we will pick up next season.

The best thing about Fort Pierce was catching up with Connie and Steve from S/V Better Days. We first met these guys in the Panama, spending a couple of days with them in the San Blas Islands and Shelter Bay Marina. These are the guys who taught us how to play ‘Sequence’. No games of Sequence this visit but dinner at a restaurant specialising in all the ribs you can eat for $10 (yum) then to Connie & Steve’s house the next night for a BBQ steak dinner (sooo good). Steve picked us up the next day, dropped me off at Publix to do the groceries while he and John went to the Sailors Warehouse (Megastore). We also dropped in to see Mark from SV Reach who is hard at it doing maintenance on the hard at Riverside Marina. Unfortunately we missed Michelle but was good to see Mark again.