Bay Springs Lake

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's)

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 180 - September 27, 2017

Our haul-out was scehduled for 9:00 a.m., but we were finished with breakfast by 8:30 a.m. so I walked up to see if we could get started a little earlier - no dice, they had another boat on the big lift that they needed to get inside and blocked, but Tony said he would come down and get us at 9 a.m., which he did. Patty walked up to the TraveLift and Tony rode on the bow as I eased around the corner. I drove into the slings, and Tony tied them with ropes, since our boat is actually a little short even for their small TraveLift! Pretty soon Daydream was up in the air, then the TraveLift was rolling to our parking spot, and finally we were parked and I was able to get started!

Daydream in the TraveLift at Aqua Yacht Harbor

With each service I have done, I get a little more confident about what I am doing and more efficient at doing it! I started draining the lower unit oil into my container first, and while that was draining, I got the oil evacuator pump set up. It took Patty's finesse to get the little tube down to the bottom of the crankcase through the dipstick hole, but once the flow was going, siphon action kept it going! While the oil evacuator tank was filling, I filled the lower unit from the bottom up with fresh 90 weight gear oil using the nifty little lower unit oil pump, put the plugs back in, and put the lower unit oil pump away. I had put oil absorbent pads down, but I only had to wipe the lower unit with a paper towel and for the first time I did not spill any of the gear oil. When the used oil had stopped flowing into the evacuator tank, I put an oil absorbent pad below the oil filter, and then removed and replaced it with a new oil filter. Again, for the first time, I did not have any oil flowing out the rear seam when I removed the old oil filter. Then I added six quarts of new oil through the oil filler hole, so I can top it up after we have run a bit today. The last thing we did was to put the used oil from the oil evacuator back into the empty quart bottles. I wish I could say we did not spill anything in that process, but that would not be true! But since we were working over oil absorbent pads, none of it got on the concrete. I wish I had known we would be directed to dispose of the used oil in a big bulk tank - I could have done that directly from the oil evacuator without putting it in the empty quart bottles, since the oil evacuator has a switch to reverse the direction of flow. 

MityVac fluid evacuator recommended by my friend Jody Kidd.
This paid for itself the first time I used it!

We were done in about an hour and a half from the time the TraveLift was parked until we were cleaned up and ready to be put back in the water! We got held up leaving by a big Carver hull minus its pilot house (the pilot house was on a separate trailer up in the parking lot, no idea how they are going to deal with putting it all back together!), which was transferred from a flatbed truck to the big TraveLift. Then it took a while for the flatbed truck to maneuver out of the way. It was quarter to noon before we were back in the water and on our way!

Aqua Yacht Harbor is on Yellow Creek, which is the point of departure from Pickwick Lake for the Tenn-Tom Waterway, so on leaving Aqua Yacht Harbor I simply took a right to head down the creek. It is all downstream from here to Mobile Bay, no more chugging upstream! We were cruising down the "Divide Cut" section of the Tenn-Tom Waterway fairly soon. The Divide Cut is a 25 mile long constructed ditch with rip-rapped banks and drainage features with energy dissipating baffles. It is not really too scenic!

We passed two tows headed north as we were headed south on the Divide Cut. I had not started Coastal Explorer so we were without AIS. but a boat following us communicated with the tows, and we were the beneficiaries of those communications!

We exited the Divide Cut about 4 p.m. onto Bay Springs Lake, which has a lot of great anchorages. We settled on one called Five Fingers Thumb.

Screenshot of Five Fingers Thumb anchorage, a very nice spot with a sandy beach!

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Sandy beach at Five Fingers Thumb anchorage on Bay Springs Lake

I had not had time to shower at the marina after doing the outboard service, so the first thing I did when we got to our anchorage was to take a shower with our nifty little Helio shower. This has a two gallon tank, a foot pump and a seven foot hose with a shower head on it - much better than a gravity fed sun shower!

Pat showering with Helio on bow! I am wincing because the water was too hot@!

Helio tank and foot pump.

The evening was quite a bit cooler than the last several had been, so all we needed for a good night's sleep was the Endless Breeze fan set on our little folding table aimed into the vee-berth!