July 06 10 to July 10 10
10 July 2010 | Bah's Bake House - Castine ME
Rik / foggy and muggy, sun coming out now
Been a few days, been without wifi. Moved around a bit, had a few "adventures".
Lets go back a few days - the trip from Cutler ME to NE Harbour ME was "ugly". Not dangerous, just ugly. The ocean can be as calm as a mill pond, can be ferocious in a storm and everything in between. Well - we had the in between. There had been a storm, a few days previous and there was a 2 to 3 foot swell coming from the south. We were travelling SE under power. That meant, a cork screw type of roll for eight plus hours. Hence my nautical term "ugly". Sea sickness was not a worry. Back when I was much younger there was a phrase "Better Living Through Chemistry" which is a variant of a DuPont advertising slogan, "Better Things for Better Living...Through Chemistry. ... Well, we have the meds that pretty much take care of sea sickness. But, is was still ugly. In addition, we picked up some weeds on the prop and the last three hours were under reduced speed. Weeds make the prop inefficient! We got to NE Harbour and I cleared the weeds, but when we left out through Western Passage, across the Bass Harbour Bar, through Casco Passage and down Eggemoggin Reach, we were still only running about 5.3 knots. Ugg - I much prefer 6.2!
We got to Castine and were kindly given the use of Jeff and Karen Siegel's mooring. The Jeff and Karen of "Active Captain" http://www.activecaptain.com/index.php
We had breakfast at Bah's with Jeff and Karen and we talked about the reduced power problem. We both agreed, the loss of a knot means you are dragging something! So, yesterday we used their other mooring way back in Smith's Cove and I went in and checked the hull from stem to stern. Nothing! Not a weed, not a piece of line, not a lobster pot! OK - as a last resort, check the system's manual. I have a full shop manual for my Yanmar 2QM20H and so started with the "Trouble Shooting" section. Loss of power - one of the options is a clogged primary filter. If there is one thing diesels like, it is clean fuel. And the primary filter is there to keep the fuel going into the injectors clean! What a dirty bloody filter! I guess eight plus hours of cork screw swells can really stir anything up from the bottom of the diesel tank.
Changed the filter, did a trial run - yuppers, back to my 6.2 at 2500 RPMs with no wind or current. Now I have to buy a few more filters, that was the last one in the spare parts box.
This is our second day in Castine and we will probably got to Warren Island State park today, or not. Depends how we feel after the coffee. The goods in Bah's Bake House are so good, we can't stay too long or we put on too much weight.
More when we next get wifi.
Rik and Linda and Captain Hook