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A 200 Mile Day!
Wednesday, March 25, 0930, Underway Calibogue Sound, off Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, Onboard Griffin.

Yesterday, we got up early for a pre-dawn start. When we got to the St. Augustine Inlet, Tom wanted to punch out into the Atlantic again. The advantage of going outside is that you can really pick up some distance. No slowing for anything, and your course is a beeline between two points instead of following the ICW's meandering.

The Georgia Coast from Offshore. Tom loves it out here because there are no speed zones, or other reasons to slow down. The weather was very calm and the ride was smooth.

The seas were calm, the sun bright, the winds light. All was good with our world. We cruised on up the coast, passing the Florida-Georgia border, and pulled into St. Simmons Island for fuel. One hundred miles before lunch! Going north from there, we decided to stay inside for the 85 miles to Thunderbolt, a suburb of Savannah.

Tom cooked lunch, Spicy Gumbo, and we took turns navigating and driving. This part of the waterway goes through the marshes of Georgia. Almost no houses or boat traffic, so we just cruised north, talking to the occasional tug and tow on the VHF radio, spotting dolphins, and looking for good digital camera nature shots.

Back in the ditch in the marshes of Georgia. This big tug and tow were heading to Florida from New York.

On a technical note, to answer a question from Griffin Follower Ed Harriger in Monterey, California, we are using a Casio QV-10 digital camera. We upload the photos to our Micron Pentium 150 notebook and then save them to Corel Photo Paint 5. In Corel we flip them, crop them and save them as a .jpg file. When all this is done, I send them as an attachment to my brother, Andrew. He posts them on the website with the captions we provide. If you haven't seen the photos yet, you might want to go to www.GriffinUpdates.com and try the photo button. There is also a map showing where we are.

Our waterway friends, Jack and Bob pulled in late to Palmer-Johnson at Thunderbolt, Georgia. We left before they work up. This is Jack's Tiara 3700 with twin Cat 435 hp diesels, radar, digital chart plotter/GPS, and all kinds of cool toys like automatic shore power cable retraction motors.

Back to the waterway, we pulled into P-J at 5:30. Tremendous run for the day. After a quick washdown of the boat, Tom went off rollerblading while I played with my engines. Every evening I go through my little ritual. I check all the fluid levels: coolant, oil, transmission oil. I add fluids as necessary. Mainly this always consists of water/antifreeze to the starboard diesel, and that's about it for fluids. I also check the glass bowls in the bottom of the fuel strainers for water and sediment. After an offshore run, and the bouncing around that entails, I expected to pull junk out of the strainers, possibly having to replace the filter elements. I replaced the elements two days ago, and they were not really dirty. I have 15 spares onboard after having an encounter where I didn't have enough, so my theory is they are cheap insurance. Tonight the filter bowl was empty of water so I didn't bother changing anything.

Trying to get exciting nature shots, Tom captured this Double Sun through the Georgia morning mist.

After I finished the port engine, I noticed that the bilge water level was above the float switch. This is unusual. Normally, the switch floats up when water gets in the bilge pocket and turns on the pump. The pump sends everything overboard, drooping the water level and the switch drops back down and shuts everything off. The switch was floating, but no pumping. I tried the manual bilge pump switch at the helm. It started pumping.

I know where the water is coming from. About 30% is coming from the starboard diesel. When it gets hot, it vents coolant out of the expansion tank. About a half gallon a day is what we add. The rest comes from the prop shaft stuffing boxes. They intentionally leak for bearing cooling at a slow steady drip. Over the course of 200 miles of running, this can mount up.

The manual bilge pump switch tripped itself off. I looked at the bilge level. Still plenty of water down there. I changed into my bilge diving, grubby clothes and slid feet first into the 14" X 14" bilge access hatch. Lucky I've been eating fruit and yogurt so I could get through. Once in, there is a surprising amount of space between the inside of the hull and the deck overhead. I crawled aft until I could reach the pump. It was hot to the touch. Nothing was obviously clogging it, so I concluded that it has just worn itself out after an unknown number of years pumping the bilges.

This graveyard was used in the filming of "In the Garden of Good and Evil".

The one thing I have, with the notable exception of spare props before two days ago, is a good supply of spare parts. I went to my spare parts locker and pulled out a new Rule 500 gpm pump. The old pump is a Rule 360 gpm so I'm feeling good that I've upgraded the capacity. Tom helped me install the new pump by handing me parts down through my little hatch and the installation went quickly. The new pump briskly cleared the bilge, and I showered while Tom finished the starboard engine checks.

We went to dinner and returned to the boat. Our goal today was to aggressively punch out into the ocean again and try for a 300 mile run to Cape Fear! We headed the 15 miles down the Savannah River from the waterway to the open ocean, and despite glowing weather reports of calm seas and light winds, we found ourselves pounding hard into steep 4-6 footers with a good strong breeze in our teeth. After knocking a few fillings loose, we decided that 6 hours of this was not going to be fun. We turned back in and finally got going northbound after a 2 1/2 hour detour.

That's it for now. Not sure where we will get to tonight. At least Charleston, South Carolina. Maybe further.

Warm Regards,

The Griffin Crew, Jon & Tom

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