Kim's First Day On The Water

We pulled out of Columbus Marina at 8:30 and turned north on the hyacinth choked Tenn-Tom. Then guess what... I noticed the temperture guage wasn't working. I knew it was slow to come up but was confident it would come up after I cranked up the rpms some more, well it didn't... crap!!! We turned around and went back to the marina AGAIN... errr. "T" was waiting on us and jumped on-board as soon as it was tied up. We pulled the hatch and right off the bat he spotted the problem, the temperature sensor line was disconnected. It was most likely a victim of the battery wrestling match, it's right near the arena... I mean battery box. Ok, not too bad, just a half hour delay. We headed out again and let me tell you just how clogged the main channel was with hyacinth... it was so clogged you couldn't drive a boat through it without sucking it up in the cooling water intake. That's right, I was running hot again, almost 200 degrees... double crap. I slowed to an idle and called "T" to inform him I may be coming back AGAIN. Before heading back I placed the boat in reverse long enough to start moving us backwards with the intent of dislodging anything that may be blocking the cooling water intake, then sat and idled for a few minutes until the temperature started to drop. Slowly I brought up the speed and held it at about 2000 rpms, the temperature was holding also at about 180 degrees... yeah, so we motored on. Finally we had broken loose from the evil forces that haunted the waters around the Columbus Marina. Honestly though, that was a great place to be stuck for a few days, everyone was extremely nice and helpful and the town has most anything you need.
There was no more drama for the rest of the day, thank goodness. We went through four locks (Aberdeen, Amory, Wilkens and Fulton) and each one was waiting with gates wide open, no wait time at all... it was a thing of beauty. Also, we passed no barges and only saw two boats, fishing boats, the entire day. We went from mile 335 to 394, that's 59 miles... pretty damn good considering four locks.