May 22 — Arghhh!

My kingdom for a 9 volt battery  (not 16 — it was the flies that caused the error — seemed like 16 volts would have served them right)! My bug zapper started weakly stunning flies rather than jolting them into oblivion just as we were facing an unimaginable onslaught of green flies. They stayed with us overnight in New Tea Kettle Creek, and I am pretty sure they invited lots of friends. The horde that greeted us in the morning even put a damper on the choir of birdsongs emanating from the marsh.

Nothing to do but grin and keep your mouth shut.

And as if a plague of flies wasn’t enough, our port engine alarm started screaming minutes after the anchor was lifted. Such a terrible sound in such a beautiful, secluded area. Several of our friends have heard this “water in the fuel tune” (I’m looking at you Gary & Carolyn), and Cliff has usually been able to quickly drain off the water and get us on our way. There have been exceptions (hello Anita & Matt!) but the distance back to shore in those cases has been short. Today was an entirely different matter.

The alarm screaming continued even after the port engine was shut off and we resigned ourselves to a long drive with a shrill accompaniement, We are ingenious, of course, (please refer back to an earlier post about stopping the new bell from clanging.) We tried cotton in our ears. We put our headsets on over the cotton. To no avail. The shriek was insistent. As were the flies. Isn’t cruising fun?!

At one point, Cliff decided to go ahead and use the port engine because he was no longer getting an alarm message on the engine controller (sorry Alan….couldn’t think if what it was really called). The engine started up, the shrieking continued….and then an alarm message notified Cliff that there was water in the fuel.

All of this happened after several attempts to drain the water from the fuel filters. It didn’t work. BUT, when I pressed the red button to turn the port engine off and quickly turned the key to the “off” position….hooray, no shrieking. This occurred about two hours into our 6 hour trip. But I’ll gladly take it.

The journey itself was very windy (I’m describing navigation here, not weather) (and Jim Comerford gave me a better word — meandering. Perfect!) (then Cliff came up with “serpentine” – extra perfect) and we had to keep a close look out for the temporary marks that have dotted our ICW path. Not so many here, but still a complicated navigation. It didn’t, however, keep my mind off the flies:-)

As thick as they were, they seemed to dissipate when storm clouds threatened. Yea storms!

Oh! And our Keurig coffee maker died. Maybe that’s the worst thing of all!!

We cruised to Savannah on one engine and made pretty good time because the tides were with us. And a lovely mechanic came aboard and with a little fiddling assured us we were good to go on our way. Water in the secondary fuel filter. Aha! Required priming the engine….not what we were prepared to do even if we’d known that was the problem.

We did see a number of stunning homes as we neared Savannah. Mostly understated, but a few mega-haciendas, which I couldn’t bring myself to photograph.

Dinner at 700 Drayton tonight. A richly earned extravagance after a harrowing day on the water. I only hope I can stay awake!

P.S. I think there is dissertation material in comparing green and black flies having spent waaaaay too much time with both of them. They are very different. Except for their bites!!