Crunch time is on
26 May 2006
Dave
We'll, we have about seven weeks left before tossing the lines and saying good-bye to land life. As I sit here typing this update, I can't help but wonder what we are forgetting to pack, order spares of, repair, etc. Lisa has been working diligently this week to order all the teaching guides as well as finalize lesson plans. Last week, we had a trial run on the boat, spending about six days on a mooring or at a dock. Our good friends who are letting us use their house were in town for a visit. With the exception of the really cold mornings and only being able to get one channel on the TV, we transitioned very well. Just kidding, the cold wasn't that bad. No TV, was actually pretty cool and the kids adapted fine. DJ & Nicole spent a lot of time fishing and cruising around in the dinghy. Every day we learned a little bit more about the boat. We feel pretty confident that we know what every button does. The one issue that I need to resolve, is why the GFI breaker keeps tripping whenever we hook up to shore power and put a load on it. When running off the inverter, all the AC circuits are fine. Stay tuned for the fix...
I also want to mention that we have both engines running fine now. If you remember from the previous post, we lost an engine when bringing the boat home. John actually came up with the fix, it turned out the Racor fuel filter was clogged enough to only allow one engine to run smoothly. The port engine would starve for fuel and stall whenever the Starboard engine was started. I never suspected this because the filter was just changed 200 miles prior and I figured if one engine ran than the filter was fine. Lesson learned.. I guess I need to add, clean fuel tank to my list.
An additional item we need to finalize is how we are going to communicate with friends and family when we leave the states. We need email capabilities wherever we end up as well as phone capabilities for emergency use and the occasional call home. I will post what our options are in my next update.