September 13... Wicomoco River


We started the engine at about 7:40 to leave Deltaville. Neither of us had slept very well and were up early. As I began the process of retrieving the anchor, and turned on the wash-down pump there was nothing. I could hear the pump running but it wasn't pumping. Without the time to spend fixing or replacing it, I got out our bucket on a rope and 30 minutes later had the rode up and somewhat free of mud.

For about 2 hours we had a wonderful sail with 10 knots of wind from the north-west. Then it was calm. We motored sailed for a while but when there was little hope, furled all sails and motored into the Wicomoco River at about 12:30. Our first attempt at anchoring was a failure... the bottom was hard and the Bruce just bounced along. We found some deeper water with the hope of better holding and on our second try made the thing stick.

Our anchorage is a cove on the south side of the Wicomoco, a little up-stream from Reedville. It's a very pretty anchorage. We didn't really need to go to town and thought this might be a place to repair the wash-down pump.

I had removed the pump while under way and it looked older than the hills. I took the end off the pump and applied some electricity and everything seem to work alright.. After lunch I attacked it in earnest. First replacing everything and tightening all hose clamps and then testing with Kathy on the foredeck activating the switch. As it turned out the problem seem to be that the pump which is supposed to be self-priming ... isn't. It only has to lift water a few inches but... just can't seem to do it anymore.

Rather that try to resurrect the dead, we'll just get a new one in Solomons.

The other problem that we noticed on the way north was that our hot water heater ... which I had repaired a while ago, seems to be have the same problem as last time. I'll have to grind my failed repairs away and try again when we stop for a day or two.

It was a beautiful day here with temps in the 80's. It clouded up in the evening and there were thunderstorms in the vicinity .. but for us the night was quiet.