08/19/2010, Cap Sante Marina
And the saga continues...after the tiring run in the fog, we were all in bed early last night. On Friday, we woke up to a beautiful sunny day! We had to get the boat in to party mode, with the flags, the inflatable palm tree and Waldo. All day long we were able to greet old friends from past parties, and make a few new ones. Three kegs of beer were popped, and along with a multitude of different rums, beers and some great food, the party was well under way! An ongoing party tradition has been the live music in the cockpit of Eagle, and this year was no different. Dave Calhoun showed up with guitar in hand and there was music until about 11:00. It is a pretty good thing the music stopped about then, as my singing skills had diminished (along with my walking and talking skills) due in part to the different rums shots that I was forced to drink. Around 12:00 I had the great idea that a walk around the docks would be in order, and with Jeanne's help steering me back to the boat, we wrapped up the first day of the Latts and Atts Cruisers Party 2011.
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08/13/2010, Kingston Marina
Well....part of last nights discussion about our trip north was a very distinct possibility for fog. We have all the latest radar and chartplotter and navigation electronics money can buy, but it still does nothing to ease the tension for your complete lack of an ability to see anything!! We are facing a 7-8 hour run, now with no chance of enjoing the view, as the fog has settled in with 1/8 mile visability. Ron has decided to just slow down and follow us as we also have the AIS tracking system that allow us to know where every comercial vessel with in 30 miles is. We did manage to still get the boat off the dock and head out at exactly 7AM. The journey was pretty stressfull, but really uneventful for the most part. Riding the current out of the Straight of Jaun De Fuca has us moving with speeds up to 11.4 knots, and of course as soon as we got going that fast the water decided to make sure that it was bumpy, so she thru in a few minutes of 10 foot seas that crashed down on the bow when we hit the bottom of the trough. The down side to going that fast was that when we needed to turn and head up Rosario Straight, we got there too soon and had to push against the tide rather than ride the flood back in. So now we were traveling at a miserable 3.8-4 knots!! The fog finally lifted just about 45 minutes before we got to the marina.
Once we made our slip, we got every thing ship shape, and it was time for a cold one!!! More tomorrow once the party gets into full swing!!
The picture I have included is WEBEGONE from about 75 yards off our starboard stern at noon.
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08/13/2010, Des Moines
As many of you know, we are regular attendees at the lattitude and attitude magazine annual crusier party. We try to wrap that time around our vacation, so this year we are headed north to Cap Santee Marina in Anacortes. Us and 140 other boats!!! Dan was kind enough to let me out an hour or so early, and we were off the dock by 5:04!! We planned to stop over at Kingston Marina tonight, then get an early start to catch the tides first thing Thursday morning. The trip up went completely un-eventful, the motor and fuel line worked perfect and we rolled into the marina just as the sun was setting. Our good friends Ron and Susan were there on their boat SV WEBEGONE. They had a parrot head friend Sasha with them. we all planned on leaving about the same time so we will buddy boat up to the islands!! WEBEGONE is an Irwin 52 with a 140 horse turbo deisel engine so I am not sure Ron will want to go as slow as we normally travel.
I plan on trying to post a blog note for each day, as the party will be wild, and if i dont post each day there is no way I will remember everything. That issue could be a rum induced problem!!
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08/08/2010, Des Moines
In our last posting we had replaced all the water lines and added the water meter.Well it seems that all that jumbling around with the water heater was just too much for it. The very next day it decided to spring a leak. It just never fails....So Jeanne made a run to Fisheries this week, and a new Seaward F-700 water heater was purchased. Hummm F700....sounds like it should be going super sonic huh? With a new tank came a new hose and wiring configuration. In the terms of "major" boat projects, this one has been pretty simple so far. We started the removal of the old tank at noon, and had the new one in plave and cooking some water by 3:00! The only glitch so far is that I wired in an indicator light in parallel with the AC power in order to know when the water heater was on. It works great, all the time. Something about the best laid plans of mice and men sort of thing.....The light is always on even when the heater is off, so i need to go back to the drawing board on that one, but it is really pretty simple.
The exciting thing about this water heater is that we were able to order (but not here yet) a replacement element that will run one side off of the 120V shore power, and the other side will run off of the 12DC side. This element will act as a diverter and use all the excess solar power that we get, once the house bank is full. This will be the last real step to remove us completely off the grid, so to speak. We are now only using shore power to heat the water. Last months power bill was $3.50!! and now we will not even have that!! Pretty cool huh?
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08/02/2010, Des Moines Marina
When we have discussed the "List", that ever changing accumlation of things that we either have to do, should do, or would like to do to the boat before we are ready to leave, one of the things that has really never been put on the list was a change out all of the water lines. In most cases I believe in the old adage "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". So, with that in mind, the water lines that have faithfully sent water to both sinks, and the shower have never been on my radar, so to speak. Jeanne on the other hand has mentioned them about every six months for the past three years. She has wanted to replace all of them. I do readily admit that the lines were the old gray compression fitting style poly hoses, and we have had at least two fittings crack and start to leak. It was decided.....Saturday would be the day that all the lines would get replaced. Jeanne made the required run to our favorite store to shop in, Fisheries Supply and got all the needed goodies! Seven hours, multiple nicks, cuts and bruises later, the job was done. We also added a new water meter to be able to track our water usage. It has a manual meter, looks like the counter on your gas meter at the house, as well as a small LCD counter that is with the other instruments for easiler access. I will get a picture on later tonight.
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07/28/2010, Des Moines
Well, to make a short story long....over the last two - three months we have been having engine problems. Actually not engine problems, but fuel supply problems. The engine runs like a champ, just so long as it can get it's fair share of fuel. This all started back a few months ago when we were happily motoring back from Burton. We had just rounded Piner Point, across from Tacoma, when the engine just died!! I ran down and fliped the selector switch on the Racor duel fuel filters, and she strted right back up. This then leads to a previous blog posting about getting to sail into the slip for the first time in really bad conditions to do so. since I am sure you have read that posting (or can go back now and do so) I will not bore you with the extremely exciting details of that adventure. This did start the adventure of finding out why the engine would not have enough fuel to run...all of the time. Since there were a bunch of things that could cause this, it was all a matter of elimination. To go and fix several things, then test the engine would have been of no benefit because if it did fix the problem, the I would never know what was the problem. So one at a time we started fixing things and then take the boat out to test it. The engine would run like a champ, for days on end, up to 1800 RPM. Bump it up to 2000 and it would died in a matter of minutes. So we started by replacing all the filters in the Racor system, and then we took the boat out...Nope, died. We then took the electric fuel lift pump apart and checked the filter, and the flow it was putting out. Seemed fine so we took the boat out....nope, died.Then we replaced the secondary fuel filter and took the boat out....nope, died. By the way, each one of these events was accompanied by bleeding the system...and then we took the boat out. For those with some engine savy, the fuel filter system has a pressure gauge that reflects the pressure that is on the fuel coming from the tank. It remained consistent even when the engine was running, dieing and at any RPM. So I was pretty comfortable that the tank supply was not the issue as while there was a small amount of pressure, it did not seem excessive. The system is a vaccum system, with the lift pump pulling from the tank rather than pushing, so where ever the air leak might be would be difficult to track down as it was pulling in air, not pushing out fuel. I then put a new fuel pump on, one with a larger CFM, and then we took the boat out. Nope....died! I re-tightened all connections, bleed the system, and took the boat out. Nope died. We were running out of things to check. We checked the fuel tank vent, and took the boat out...nope, died. We put a couple of gallons of fuel in one of our Jerry jugs and disconnected the line from the tank to the racor filters. I ran a short line from the jerry jug, to the racors in an effort to eliminate any questions about the tank....and we took the boat out. She ran like a champ, and at any RPM for as long as we wanted and the pressure gauge actually showed zero pressure. One of the design faults of the Freeport is a complete lack of viewing access to any of the tanks, and the fuel tank was no exception. So, we decided to put a whole new hose on and take the boat out. This would be the point where things got a little shaky...in all my climbing around in the engine compartment, I failed to notice that I had loosened the transmission cable connector that holds the cable in place while the inside slides back and forth allowing the tansmission to go from forward to neutral to reverse. As we are taking the boat out to try it.....a common theme here...Jeanne puts her in reverse, and she pulls out of the slip. She then goes for forward to pull the boat out into the fairway to leave and with some very calm excitment informs me that she has no transmission. We are drifing towards our neighbors boats...so I manually put the boat in gear at the transmission and we are going to head out, while I tighten the transmission cable. Another small detail then caught up with me. We now have a brand new fuel cable, approximatly 14 feet long, that has now just dumped 3/8" inside diamater x 14 feet worth of air into the system. So, just about the time I get the transmission fixed, the engine decideds to not run, well, very smoothly. We limp into the gas dock, and reapirs are made. Back to our slips to continue testing as after bleeding, the engine is not running well, and we have a bunch of pressure on the fuel filter gauge. Now I will have to work on the tank proper from inside that lazerett. Once inside there, my body in a form that would make pretzel proud, I begin to pull the manual fuel tank connector and switch apart. SUPRISE!!! it is nearly 100% clogged with crap!! In addition, once I have it off were I can see it, the hose barb is a 1/4" and I have 3/8" fuel line. A good cleaning, a new hose barb and we are good as gold. Especially after we have the fuel cleaning company come pump out our tank and cleaning it. Now to go take the boat out and try it!!
Adventures in boating!! gotta love it!
see you on the water
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