North Palm Beach

Anchored in North Palm Beach's old port cove anchorage in 17 feet at 1:12pm. Ran 28 nm today. Was 41F this morning; winds NW15 knots.


Hobe Sound bridge opening for big motoryacht.



Jupiter lighthouse off the ICW.


Rich locking dinghy at foot of bridge off old port cove. From here a quarter mile walk to Publix supermarket and many other stores.

We had a bit of a scare this morning. Woke up to a chilly 41F at 7am so started the diesel generator to get hot water and the electric heater going (we have the separate Wallas diesel stove/heater but today we didn't have any hot water in the tank so we need to generate a little AC power). After the generator was running what seemed to be only a couple of minutes I noticed a little then a lot of white smoke coming out of the back of the boat. I shut down the engine; woke up Tamara; launched the dinghy; gathered all key items in backpacks in case we had to abandon the boat; put lifejackets on; hailed an anchored motorboat just downwind of us and asked them to go to VHF channel 68 to have them stand by with their dinghy, just in case (they never replied!); and then called TowBoat/US on VHF channel 16. The would be there as soon as they could.

I didn't dare open the engine hatch in the aft cockpit where the diesel generator was located. No way was I going to introduce a little oxygen. At any rate, a big rigid inflatable Towboat/US arrived 40 minutes (!) later and towed us to a seawall where the fire trucks were waiting. The Old Port Cove marina had instructed TowBoat/US *not* to bring us into their marina--smart decision, and one I'd make too. One of the firefighters opened our hatch and, thank goodness, by now all was cold inside. They said these things (boat fires) are spectacular and if I had indeed had one I would have known pretty quickly.

Apparently the raw water input failed so the exhaust did not have sea water to cool it and thereby very hot exhaust gases burned right thru the plastic elbow. We've closed the seacock and won't use the diesel generator for the balance of the trip. I'll fix it when we get home in March.

The NexGen factory tech I spoked with on the phone about this mentioned this incident was the 'perfect storm' of conditions for this to occur. They do have a auto-shutdown capability if the engine temperature goes above a certain level, however since I started the genset up without cooling water flowing the engine itself never reached this limit for the shutdown process to occur.

At any rate, I (Rich) should have really checked the impeller before leaving Michigan last August (perhaps I was too focused on having the Yamaha 150 serviced). We don't know when the impeller was last changed, so 'my bad. Luckily this incident didn't end badly and we got off with a 'stern warning'.


Destroyed Vetus 45 degree elbow, model SLFVG40K. It's great that the plastic used to make this was fire-retardant. If the elbow had not had failed safely, then perhaps the rubber exhaust hose would have next been in line and could have caught fire.


After removing the water pump from the generator--which you have to do on the NexGen to get to the impeller--you can access the pump coverplate and open it. Here's the totally broken-apart rubber impeller, model Jabsco 22405-0001. I'll have to check that bits and pieces didn't make their way to the heat exchange tube bundle.