it's gonna be hard to get lost we just go downstream right she turns nicely
that's looking sloppy
what did i tell you it would pay off okay yes it works okay throwing a fit
crying about it you know selling all your stuff and moving to oh that sounds pretty good too nah
yeah patience wonderful thing okay so we've gone to neutral or waiting for the speed to come down
that's half speed and that's been about a minute so it takes a long time for her to bleed her
speed off all that momentum right yeah how much did she weigh i don't know probably 65 tons now
120 pounds 120 000 pounds roughly i'm just guessing reverse starting to lose steerage
look at her twist
you're doing you're doing that you can't why are you doing that for all right all right because
that's the wrong way that's the bank over there you know that right 0.8.9 are you in reverse
you don't have much water out here
oh she's coming around really nice man i like that steering that's sweet
okay but i i had i've totally screwed this up in reverse
right i thought i was pulling her that way it was because she's still moving forward
she's moving forward yeah you got the rudder is going to still act like she's going forward
well i'm i'm theorizing here well okay use the other side of the river shallow water
well you're right on the edge of the thing you're in you're in eight feet all right 1200 rpm reverse
okay she's down to two knots yeah she's starting to turn that's weird well she's still going
forward you have the helm to to uh yeah you know i don't know i think if she's still going
forward i think the helm is gonna act like she's going forward yeah she's swinging back yeah so
we're still going forward barely one knot and you're bringing the rudder over see now she's
she's just so i am pulling yeah so that's the rudder doing that let's see what happens
you're still in reverse she had very little throttle but that's all right
she should start backing up
what's up we're just playing
yeah yeah she's backing up and the head's coming around because you got full
starboard rudder yeah okay she's responding like we i think she should
yeah we're pushing hard on the side do you think we would be yeah we're not going to have rudder
under here until we get the autopilot done how you look you can see the direction line coming around
so that's a good indication whether you're actually moving forward or back that'd be
perfect for night time right look at the little back yuppie line on there
oh yeah yeah you zoom out and see how far we are from the 412th bridge
i don't know where the 412 bridge is it's going to be when when the river dog legs
out all right that's it over here there it is there it is what do you think yeah it's great
she's really responsive isn't she absolutely yeah because we're not using much rudder at all
okay we just finished a speed test so this is our rpm and this is our speed we got up to 7.2 knots
the transmission temperature came up to 200 the exhaust temperature topped out at 750.
that's the number we don't like we're gonna put a bigger pump for the coolant the heat exchanger
on the transmission but i like i like very much this number is we have the prop in its normal
operating position we could pitch it harder than that we tried that but it's not a good idea so we
noticed yesterday we got a little leak where it's sucking air into the power steering uh line the
return line so we're getting a lot of foam back through the hundred shed and it won't change pitch
under load so it does fine when we put it into neutral and bring the rpm down that makes sense um
maybe when we fix that line it'll work better but it doesn't really matter we don't do that a lot
well mainly for sailing now somewhere there's an overlay so there's your radar your chart
this is depth let me show you this i really like seeing this
okay and look at this a little souvenir from the port of katusa
my version of a waterfall
opened up something coming from down below and this is what i'm greeted with
but they're just sitting there
i think that's i 44 and 43. i could be wrong i better go look
so legacy and they're showing up showing up cool that's both of them right there cool excellent
they're our first amount of debris i'm going to enjoy all the machinery
and industry you see along the river i think this is sims metal management
it's one of our metal scrappers this is our first traffic this is redeemer the river actually looks
wider now i kind of like that he's giving us a lot of room you feel good about it a little bit
about it all right where are you on the chart what's your watered down 22 feet okay all right
it is a wonderful feeling i mean you see the water birds the wake on the boat
it's uh it's more than i expected i actually thought we'd be fighting problems today because
we've been fighting problems all week long but uh it's turned out to be a fantastic day we're
making six and a half knots they'll put us down three forks about sunset we may slow down a bit
just so we can spend the night on the river well we are in lock 18 and those gates are closing
you guys did beautiful good too great highlighting great quality great pilot first time
properly in you're just going to push off you okay you got a paddle up there that'd help you out
how much current is there
let's see what a normal drop looks like if can you slow it down if we panic
yeah i'm on channel 14 with you just let me tell you if it's too fast uh how much does it weigh uh
about uh 65 tons okay we'll open it up and we'll let you down all right come slow here and then
take it easy on the beginners yeah all right thank you yeah no worries
you are going down there's a nice little system there
so it's got big-ass wheels in the wall really smooth that's nice
one thing we've had to do is just throw it in reverse back up a little bit make sure our fenders
right there at the catwalk stay on that steel but it just slips down that it's just gentle as can be
i love that so the doors don't even go down the bottom river they just get you inside
that should be i don't know 12 feet or so oh there they are we're on the river level
i was promised more drama yeah i'm sorry that's about as much drama as i want for this first lot
lock 18 thank you for taking our opportunity this is seeker out going to 16. you all stay safe
now there's a captain right there that's the look you want so the camera crew gets their time too
and always give the helm away right before a bridge that way you're not responsible right
yeah give it to a first timer yeah you're doing fine thank you right down the middle
howdy oh hi get ready to jump boy she looks good doesn't she
now we're approaching lock 17 the river goes that way through the dam
and the lock is down this fork over here
i don't know who's driving oh cool
how'd you end up with that he handed it to me i just walked away he just handed to me
just never looks like it's going to go under
yeah we got i know there's like 75 there's like 75 feet i know
it's 50 feet at the high water right and we're not there
i cannot help but laugh every time that thing goes off earlier today we were burning 2.58
gallons per hour running about 1500 rpm we slowed it down and we burned 2.3 gallons per hour so
little savings there and we slowed it up because were having trouble
with the transmission oil temperature and went up to 210 we don't like it that high
excuse me you work for tow boat us
the first time i got a good look at the boat here but we are four inches
above the paint mark there that's not as bad as i thought it'd be river anchoring find a tree
full steam ahead into the mud let's see how deep i think in this [ __ ] hey this is pretty good yeah
okay oh my god that is a gorgeous looking boat
there she is in her first anchorage we're just down the river from ok
oklahoma not bad for the end of this day
seeker's first morning waking up on the water a beautiful morning for it
a little mist a few fish hitting the surface occasionally
sound of all those cars going down the highway over there
new problem this morning the rope is frozen into the tinder so the question is will the starter
work this morning go ahead give a shot best of luck oh yeah boat gods are with us oh
[ __ ] what i don't have my boots we need to get somebody hand me my boots i'm not going to
walk up that mud oh maybe it's frozen that's frozen oh it's the ones yeah give me those
we're looking at the steering of the boat and it's more out of the water so we think we're
a little of ground forward yeah that's hard so we're gonna go and do the bow
line first and maybe the current will swing the bow around i don't you see any current
in this river there's current but with the anchor down it's not gonna do it do anything
you know we need a name for this octopus here but the plan this
morning is to uh see if we can steer off this button bank we anchor it up against
we think we will if it doesn't work then we're going to put the dinghy out and
pull the bow away nobody's betting that we'll need the dinghy though so so far nothing
somebody should have bet against that idea we're gonna try and pull the bow around a little bit
yep i think we're going for a tree now oh it did oh it moved
oh i didn't know it was moving no no no we will get it put it forward
there it goes
i'm glad we put a 15 horsepower engine on it not a 10. there we are and i discovered this morning
that there is a carabiner that i do not like it's those little ones well i'll show you this piece of
crap look at that teeth in that thing okay got a rope snagged in it had to jerk it loose and
it tore my skin so we're gonna have climbing carabiners on seeker okay we're leaving the
vertices behind and there's the arkansas and it's moving about as slow as the vertices which i like
just a little further down we meet the yosho then the yosho comes down from grand lake so there's
the vertices we came down this is the arkansas making a loop there's the new show coming in
right there that's uh that's our entrance into three forks harbor
this docking is a cinch when you don't have any waves i want the bow pulled off some so keep
pulling so we just balance it you know we'll touch right there and you're going to pull
the bowel line up how tight it's getting tight let me give you some slack on the bow line okay
it's slack pull that's good that'll work perfect a little blood on the rope it's a good thing for it
one and a quarter day adventure but we are at three forks harbor
you did a hell of a nice job steering us in here that was so scary i'm jealous i mean
it is hey it's not your boat b you know i am going to yell at you for the rest of your life
couldn't let down the family name oh you did beautiful i got to pull her off the mud bank
so yep that was fair trade so if any of you boaters especially you loopers want to make an
out of the way trip you can come up to three forks harbor in muskogee oklahoma that's where we are it
is a beautiful facility with lots of space and a gorgeous warm sunny day with snow in the forecast
so the next step here is to figure out what we're going to change on uh seeker we need to lighten
her ass end we may even weld on blisters that's adding more boats to it to get more buoyancy back
there we're about oh i'd like to bring her up at least six inches i think we're gonna need a
different tender because while i love it because it's tough you could run it up on the rocks and
it wouldn't hurt it it's just too damn heavy i think we're gonna have to lighten our load by
enough to at least put a sizeable tender on there so we're probably going to maybe we'll raffle off
the tinder and buy us something so if you want to support us do that we made it this far we'll
probably make it the rest away too you know our vmac down there is not tied into the uh
skate cooler so it's uh just blows hot air out into the engine room people said oh that's going
to make that engine grow miserably hot well thank god for that because this is oklahoma this morning
we've got about two inches of snow out there and it's still coming down whether it's the m
carnes flag the mckellen kerr arkansas river navigational system porter muskogee oklahoma
united states and it's covered with snow today but hey it's oklahoma give it a week there'll be
girls in bikinis and people fishing out here no more slush speaking of ships and snow did
you guys see where they found shackleton's ship that's fantastic gotta get out there and join them
maybe not that far south to begin with but i'm looking at this spot so when this melts off and
dries up that's a nice flat area of grass and i can build the sails there that's next on the
agenda is get up the mass put the heads on build the sails up call them over there put some sails
on it and back into the arkansas river and down to uh kerr reservoir just another day's trip down
we'll try out sailing down there and maybe we can get something done about the slip and the
allison transmission my motor guys much smarter than me about it are looking into that thing
to do is get the torque inverter tightening up a little bit so it doesn't maybe just a little stub
shaft through there because marine transmissions don't actually have torque converters they don't
need it they don't drive axles on ground they drive propellers in water which is easier so
we might get that fixed if we don't you know 6.5 knots at 1500 rpm we can live with that maybe a
little more water through the heat exchanger is all we need that's what's going to stop us now
the neighbors are getting kind of nosy
god isn't that gorgeous
yeah the boat looks good too tonight my first home cooked meal okay it's just frozen pizza but hey
you