Lake Worth for two days, but leaving before dawn for Miami

Leaving before dawn from Lake Worth, bound for Miami.  Nice anchorage here... but found one strange thing due to the extended East winds...and wild seas for the last few days...(weeks) the sea life around us... cost us a generator impeller, and some tense moments.  

Night before last... we're laying in the aft cabin watching the last of "Criminal Minds" on TV.. and the generator was running (6 kW nORTHERN LIGHTS..) to charge the batteries before nighttime...

When all of sudden... and I mean sudden...the exhaust note changed on the diesel engine..(driving the generator)... and before I could get from the aft cabin, down the galley walk-way, and around to the engine room the generator shut down on "high temp"... (NO cooling water !!!!!! ) What the heck...?????

So I took the top off the raw water strainer... Inside the strainer was completely clogged with a portugese-man-o-war (jellyfish)....

after removing (carefully) the strainer... I opened the seacock again..with the top off the raw-water strainer...and more of the jelly fish came out of the inlet pipe... YUCK!!!!  (clear jelatious mass)!

Starfish at Peanut Island Park - Lake Worth (Palm Beach)

But the real problem was that in that few seconds of no cooling water... the impeller on the water pump 'toasted' itself... and now I have an impeller with 2-1/2 whole fins (out of the normal 12.     The strange thing is that once the strainer was clear... this old impeller actually cooled the generator... it Worked!!!!   but now it's replaced...and working efficiently.