DAY 2

After days, months and weeks of planning and a very successful first day, my Ohio River trip is now on hold. I slept great overnight and woke up early to check out the article reporter Bob Batz wrote about my trip for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newspaper. I made the front page.....yeah! The photographs taken by photographer Lily LaRegina were awesome as well!

https://www.post-gazette.com/life/outdoors/2020/07/15/Pittsburgh-to-Cairo-Illinois-Ohio-River-sailing-trip-sailboat/stories/202007130116

After eating breakfast and packing things for today’s leg of the trip, I was back on the Ohio by 8:00. Since the wind hadn’t picked up yet, I was once again using my Honda 2.3 outboard motor. About five minutes after starting I heard the engine start.bogging down. Within a minute the engine stopped in mid-river. I tried to restart several times without success. Since I didn’t see any traffic approaching from up or down river and there was a little breeze, I hosted the main sale and began sailing very, very slowing toward the bank. About then I noticed that a tow boat pushing fifteen barges was approaching me from about a mile away. I figured even at my slow rate of travel I would be out of the shipping channel in plenty of times, but then the little breeze I had disappeared. So I’m stopped in the shipping channel with no motor, no wind, and a bunch of barges headed directly toward me. Fortunately I added oar locks to the boat several weeks ago and had two seven foot oars stored in the space under the seats in the cockpit. So I hurriedly got the oars in place and began rowing as quickly as I could to get out of the towboat’s path (he even sounded his horn once). I was able to get out of the way before the barges were within about a half mile and I relaxed a little as I continued on to shore. I beached the boat and checked everything I could think of, then restarted the motor. It sounded good as I moved back onto open water, but within two minutes the bogging down and stopping process occurred again. So I’m back to paddling toward shore to re-evaluate my situation. Eventually I raise the main sail and was able to navigate a mile and a half down river to Chester, West Virginia. They have a nice little park, a courtesy dock and a boat ramp. I tied up there and waited for my son to come rescue me. 

I posted my situation on the owners group of the type of sailboat I have, asking if I’m expecting too much from my motor. For the most part people seemed faithful to the motor and there were many suggestions of things to check or other motors that have been used successfully. So my next step is to get some profession diagnostics and decide how or when to resume my Ohio River Trip.