Another Fun Trip Ahead

Gofirstclass

Gofirstclass

Well-Known Member
Apr 20, 2010
11,700
Tri Cities, WA
Boat Info
Boatless in WA
Engines
No motor
Tomorrow morning at 0500 a friend of mine from our yacht club is picking me up. We're headed to the train station to board the train to Vancouver, WA to pick up his boat in Portland, OR and bring it upstream. The train station is almost directly across the river from the boat yard so they're picking us up at the train.

His boat is a new-to-him 39' Bayliner Motor Yacht and appears to be well equipped.

I'm taking my camera and video camera so should have tons of pics to put on here when I get a chance. We're leaving Friday around noonish to head up river and should make it to Hood River, Or before we stop. That takes us through Bonneville Dam and about 70 miles of river. Saturday we should make it through The Dalles Dam, John Day Dam, and on to Arlington before we stop (about 75 miles). Then Sunday we're going through McNary Dam and home, about 88 miles.
 
Careful out there on the Bayliner, you never know if they make it very far!
 
Enjoy... be careful!
 
When is the last time someone actually heard about, or saw a Bayliner sink? I never have.

First Class.............I hate your life. :)
 
Well I'm finally back. What a trip this has been. We took the train to Portland and that was a fun trip. It pulled out of Pasco right on schedule at 0535. I slept for a bit once we got started but woke up before the sun was coming up around 0630. We went up stairs in the railroad car and I got a few pics, but those are on another chip and I'll have to get to them later.

So we arrived at the boat yard just after 10:00 and learned the boat was not yet done (Does that sound typical, or what!!) and they said it would be around 3 hours. So we went to lunch. After a long lunch we returned and found out it still wasn't done. More on that later.

Here's a shot of a Marlow that was in the yard. If I could have my dream boat, this would be on the short list...
AP1270381.jpg

Here are a few shots of Jack's boat when I first saw it...
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They finally got the boat ready and we took it out for a test run. The first stop was for some fuel, but here's Jack at his first time at the helm...
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and after we put fuel in it...
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(continued)
 
There were still some issues with the power so we went back to the boat yard. (BY THE WAY, THIS IS NOT THE SAME BOAT YARD THAT DID THE WORK ON BEACHCOMBER!!!)

They did some more work on it and said it was all done and we were good to go. So we headed to Columbia River Yacht Club for the night. Well, things weren't all right so once we got to the yacht club we called the yard and the big boss and the worker bee came back out. It was about 7:00 by the time they got done so they gave us a ride to a local restaurant. After a grrrreat steak dinner the owner of the restaurant gave us a ride back to the boat. After a couple more adult beverages we settled in for a good night's sleep.
I got up first this morning at 0630. Here's a shot of the dash as we were warming engines...
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and just before we pulled out...
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We pulled out at 0730 after we had some sunlight to run by. The cruise to Bonneville dam (45 miles) was uneventful. We passed two tugs/barges headed up stream and got to the lock well ahead of them so the lockmaster sent us up first. Jack did a great job of bringing the boat up to the bollard(his first time in a lock) and we got tied up and lifted up without any issues.

The weather for this trip has been cold but otherwise perfect. There's almost zero wind, no waves, no fog, etc. Here's a shot of Mount Hood as we were headed upstream...
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and another shot of the hills with snow on them....
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We pulled into The Dalles Yacht Club right at noon and found the bay covered with 3/4" ice. So we became the icebreaker for the club...
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So here we sit. It's now 2:30, the electrical guy is back here on the boat to try YET AGAIN to see if he can fix the problems. It seem the genset won't stay running, the inverter won't keep inverting, and unless we're plugged into shore power we don't have a reliable source of 110V.

More to come, but that will be later tonight or tommorrow a.m. All things considered it's been a great trip so far. The boat is nice, the twin 330hp Cummins engines are running great, we've cruised the 90 miles here at about 20kts, and the scenery is fantastic.

Now if only we can get the electrical issues resolved.
 
Nice trip, nice boat, the Columbia, Mount Hood, I have been there, good fun, GFC......I am more than a little jealous.........thanks for the photos..........
 
That's a nice looking boat - sometimes the shorter bridge boats can have strange dimensions. Thanks for posting the pictures - sure am glad I'm not dealing with any ice here! Hope they figure out the issues!
 
That is a nice looking boat and looks to be in great shape. Hope you get the electrical issues sorted out.

The trip up the river has to be a pretty cool experience too.
 
This is going to be just quick post. I don’t have time to process the pics I got yesterday and get them posted but I wanted to let you know that we’re alive and well. Yesterday was a long and, in some ways, frustrating. We spent the night before at The Dalles Yacht Club. That’s where we had to break ice to get into their marina.

When we were getting ready to leave yesterday morning we took a look at the fuel situation and determined that we had enough to make it to Arlington (55 miles) but possibly not to Umatilla (100 miles). We tried to call several people on the fuel dock call list but couldn’t get any answers. Our only option at that point was to turn around and head back down the river to Hood River (20 miles) to fuel up.

So we started the day by backtracking. Not a good way to start. We got there in good order and, to get fuel, you have to call the local Shell station so they can send a guy down to unlock the pump and give us our fuel. He was there waiting when we pulled into the dock and we filled up (175 gallons).

We determined that the inverter was not working properly. The voltage output when we were running on the inverter was only 86 volts. Jack spent a fair amount of time on the phone with the boat yard trying to troubleshoot it, but we decided we wouldn’t delay our trip to wait for them to come (AGAIN) and try to fix it.

Also, the impeller in the genset disintegrated on Saturday so we didn’t have shore power and didn’t have good inverter voltage. That meant we had to overnight at a marina where there was shore power. That eliminated Arlington so we had to go to Umatilla. So that meant we had to run a total of 140 miles (including the 40 miles roundtrip to fuel up).

We were cruising right at 20kts and the diesels were just purring. We made good time running back from Hood River to The Dalles Dam and got right into the lock.

Things went fine through The Dalles Dam. We made it through with no delays and headed back upstream at 20kts. It took us just over an hour to get to the next dam (John Day) but when we got close we heard a tug talking to the lockmaster. He was just going into the lock headed upstream. That meant they had to raise him then turn the lock around and lower it for us, when put us back a bit over an hour. That meant we’d be getting into Umatilla well after dark which was not something we really wanted to do but really had no choice but to run after dark.

So we headed out after John Day and had a nice run on ultra-smooth water all the way to Umatilla. When we got here it was just about 6:00 p.m. and VERY dark. The entrance to the harbor is not lighted except for a green flashing buoy on one side of the entrance. As we were coming in very slowly we encountered a “No Wake Zone” buoy so had to do a quick shot in reverse to avoid it. We got in on our second approach, found a slip and got in without any issues and hooked up to shore power.

In the middle of the night the winds kicked up and are blowing about 10-15mph. As I sit here it’s 0730, we were just about ready to head out and go through the next lock at McNary Dam when we heard a tug call the dam and request upstream lockage. They have priority over recreational vessels so we’re just waiting until they get him up and can turn the lock around and get us in.

After we leave the lock it’s about a 2 hour run to our home area. We’re going to stop and fuel up and dump the tanks before we head to the yacht club and put this baby in her new slip.

All things considered this has been another great trip. Yeah, we’ve had electrical issues, it’s been cold (high 30’s to mid 40’s) for most of the trip but it’s been without wind until this morning. With the three of us on the boat yesterday it was a non-stop day of watching for buoys and some good natured teasing and joking among the three of us. The boat has run exceptionally well with the diesels not missing a lick.

After I get home I’ll process the pics I took and upload them to my photobucket account so you can look at them if you want.
 
Just curious, what inverter does it have and what type of meter were you using to test the voltage?
 
Today should be called "What a Day This Was" or maybe "Doesn't The Wind Ever Stop Out Here?"

This is going to be a little short and no pics until tomorrow. The Reader's Digest version of today was...
...I was awakened in the middle of the night by the high winds pounding the boat
...We were delayed an hour at the lock
...We were blown all over the place
...We made it home in one piece at 11:00.

I just got up from a well deserved nap. I'll process the videos and pics later tonight and get some posted tomorrow morning some time. I tried to upload some videos to Youtube but it's not working for some reason.

Catch y'all later.
 
Very cool adventure, thanks for sharing.
 
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