Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers and grandmothers out there! We had a leisurely morning. We made a few phone calls, checked the weather, and took Auggie to shore for his morning walk. My foot was still a little sore and I didn’t want to get the cut wet, so Bob took the “shore duty” alone. It was an overcast day and a little cooler than yesterday to start the day. That was nice! We pulled the anchor at 11:15 and motored slowly across Sarasota Bay to Longboat Pass between Longboat Key and Anna Maria Island. There we dropped anchor at 12:15 in front of the Mar Vista Restaurant. It was a busy place for Mother’s Day with boats coming and going.
We relaxed, watching all the action! I enjoyed myself doing a little reading trying to stay cool.
After lunch, we took a long dinghy ride around the area. There were lots of boaters out on the sandbar romping and floating in the water.
More people and boats were on the beach point at Longboat Key soaking up the sun.
We got back to the boat in time for a call from our friends and neighbors, Denny and Brigid, who asked if we wanted to join them for dinner at Mar Vista where we were anchored. We agreed and dinghied to sore once they arrived by car. We had a nice dinner and conversation and bid out goodbyes around 5:00.
Bob and I returned to the boat and relaxed a little before taking Auggie to shore for his evening walk. The evening cooled off nicely and it was calm in the anchorage. Bob turned on the generator as he usually does for an hour before bedtime to charge up the batteries and after a minute or two, it died. He tried it again and it died. Then he smelled something burning and realized that the impeller had burned up. Earlier in the afternoon when we had the generator running for some AC comfort, he noticed that the generator wasn’t putting out any water. That’s not good. He went down in the engine room to discover there was a air lock. He fixed that pretty easily and thought everything was fine. We hadn’t run the generator since then. Luckily, he had another impeller on board, but he spent the next hour replacing it and creating a new gasket out of Permatex. Not something he wanted to have to do as darkness fell, but it had to be done. He also had to clean out the sea strainer which was full of seaweed.
After putting everything back together, he turned it on again and it worked like a charm. Thank goodness! Now we could both rest easily knowing it was fixed and running like it should…… for the time being.
