Yanmar engines, and the Stephen King Marina Thursday, September 18, 2014

Thursday, September 18^th

We slept well in our anchorage.  Refreshed, and thinking that all would be well, and that we would just head down to the next lock, Tim fired up the motor. 

Except it didn’t fire up.

The starter just clicked. 

We both looked at each other and said “darn” (well, not the exact words).  We had just checked Battery #1, and it seemed fine. We switched it to Battery #2 and the engine finally fired up. With a sigh of relief, and knowing that we wouldn’t spend the rest of our lives just off Little Cody Island, IA. we then proceeded to Lock and Dam 18 (about 22 miles).

We are getting better at going through the locks. Practice seems to help a lot! 

White pelicans are starting their sojourn to the south.  Tim caught a picture of the pelicans as they worked toward the sky, looking for an updraft to rise higher and higher.  They cluster in groups on sandbars and small islands for the night.  In the morning, groups take off, join with others to form a large flock that heads southward in single file.


White Pelicans Waiting to Take Off

White Pelicans Heading South

As you may have noted, bridges of all kind are kind of scary, at least for Kathy.  Many don’t have
markers telling us the current vertical height of the bridge from the water. So we depend on our charts to help us out.

As we cruised through Burlington, IA, we navigated under this bridge



Burlington, IA Car Bridge

And under a lift bridge.  Once again, our little sailboat stopped traffic!

Burlington, IA Lift Bridge

We continued down to Fort Madison, Iowa.  There was a railroad swing bridge that we hailed, and passed through after about a 30 minute wait.  Onward to the Riverview Marina, just south of the swing bridge. 

Then the challenges began.  As we entered the marina, our depth sounder started to warn us that the depth was 2.8 to 3 feet from the bottom of our boat. We need at least 3 feet of water under our boat for the keel to clear the bottom.  Sand and muck churned up, but we maneuvered into a slip.  Kathy stepped off the boat onto the dock and the dock started to buck, wobble and sway.  Tim moved the boat to the opposite side of the slip which was more stable, and we tied Sea Fever up for the night. 

We hooked up the electricity, and that worked. But when Kathy turned on the water from the dock, just a small trickle of pink came out of the faucet. We called the city, and they sent someone down to turn the water on.  

However, there was no solution to the lack of showers or bathrooms (except for the port-a-potti at the end of the dock).

At least we had an electrical hook up! 

Tim cleaned up the boat, Kathy walked to the local grocery store, an Aldi, where she neither recognized nor bought much besides potato chips.  

She also found this sign on an establishment which seemed to sum up the town. What more could someone want?




All the Creature Comforts Needed

A couple who kept a boat in the marina knocked on our boat, and we chatted with them for a while.  An interesting couple, they had 4 boats, 8 kids, and told us a bit about the marina and shared a great deal of information about the river in the Fort Madison area.

The Riverview Marina is owned by the city of Fort Madison. Let’s just say that it is not a big priority for the city.

The couple reaffirmed that the water was not safe to drink.  They told us that we were 2 blocks from an active penitentiary that had been built during the Civil War.  The building next to the marina used to be the Schaefer pen company, which Bic purchased and then closed down.  The town is known as the “Pen City” for both of those establishments. 

It was a long day, and we were tired, so we tried to sleep, without success. 

The train tracks were next to the marina, and because the trains passed through several intersections in town, they blew whistles at every intersection.  In addition, the swing bridge was just up river from us, so every time the swing bridge opened, a siren sounded, the swing bridge creaked, and a horn sounded when the bridge closed.  Whistles, sirens, creaks and horns seemed to occur every 15 to 30 minutes throughout the night.

To add to the drama, the marina had no lights at all except for arc lights from the abandoned restaurant next door.

At least twice, the Fort Madison police came through the parking lot and scanned the marina with their spotlights.  Nice to know that they had the marina under surveillance.  Disconcerting to know that they had to.  A very sleepless night.

We felt as though we were in the midst of a Stephen King novel. 

We got up before dawn, had our coffee and tea, and hoped we had enough water depth under the boat to make our exit.  As soon as we thought we could see the markers for the channel, we left the marina.  Miraculously, we had enough depth, and left what we now call the Stephen King Marina in Fort Madison, IA. On to Missouri, and the Art Keller Marina.

Thanks for reading.