Yesterday was another uneventful aka relaxing day at sea. I was pleasantly surprised to see we where doing 7+ kts when i came on watch at 430 am. apparently we had finally motored into a bit of the gulf stream. we did not hold that speed all day but averaged over 6.
they day was a bit overcast and definitely not tropics weather i was actually trying to get into dirrect sun to stay warm, does not boad well for Charleston 200nm north. after more book reading and relaxing I made us another yaki soba dinner with raman and our last onion.
When I went off watch at midnight after watching another bond flick It was looking like we wold get in miday. Plenty of time to check in find the marina and go out for dinner somewhere.
Alas by 430 am when i got up for my next watch everything had changed. We where down to 3.5 kts projected to get in after sunset. at first i figured it was another gulf stream eddy which it was in part but then our speed dropped even more and the port engine stopped
great i thought, so much for a final relaxing day at sea, i got it restarted but it was not hitting the revs it usually had. i figured perhaps just low on fuel. the plan had been to never let any tank get more than half empty but we had dropped the ball on this.
by now it was light and don was up so he added diesel and i looked into swapping the fuel filter. it is one of those crappy 3 part ones with a cartridge. fortunately don had a spare cartridge. i had to take the whole thing out to get it apart. even then i had to poind a screw driver into the cartridge to get enough fore on it to unscrew it. when i did i was full of a disgusting black fuel and water mixture. i asked don when he last replaced the filter was, “never” he replied, “but i drain it and it has always been clear”, mmm i thought
i let don clean all the gunk out of the bowl with gasoline, of course we where out of paper towels making everything more challenging. we got everything back together but alas no joy on starting. i tried bleeding it like i used to do on mine and could not get hardly andy flow. i had already filled the bowl on the filter so i had fuel there. i discovered if i opened the blead on the filter i could pump a bit of fuel and then it would stop.
this lead me to believer the intake was clogged. i took the hose off and low and behold nothing. i added a clear plastic hose and tried sucking and blowing, nothing, not good! i removed a section of pipe with the shut off valve and got just a dribble of fuel.
i sent don up to clean out the section with the valve in it while i worked on the tube coming from the tank. i added a pice of clear tubbing and after blowing hard was eventually able to get fuel to come out. i let it drain until it would plug up and then i would do this again. what was coming out was not good looking. eventually i filled a gallon bottle and declared victory.
don came back with his part and i asked it he was sure it was clear “yes” he said, have you blown through it i said “yes” said don then proceeded to demonstrate the blowing. he was pointing the thing at me when he blew and fortunately my reflexes where good and i took the glob of crap he blew out mostly in the hat not the face (see photo). after a few more blows without crap i reinstalled everything.
surprise surprise priming now worked i told don to fire it up, i waited for ever and finally went on deck only to discover the ignition switch casing had broken off and fallen back into the panel. great, we got the switch to the point we could start it with a screw driver and it fired right up!
i started cleaning up and next thing i new i saw don removing the fridge, not a simple task. whats up i asked, “i dropped part of the switch behind the fridge” great. after another 20 minutes of searching we discovered the part had actually fallen out the other side and into the trash. always something.
it was not 930, we where finally motoring on both engines but still under 5 kts and still looking at getting in after sunset. so much for advance planning. while we where debugging the port engine don reported we where actually going backwards at some point due to the current.
hopefully once we get completely across the gulf stream we will pick up some speed and make up some time, presuming nothing else happens!
cheers
Roger
