Wednesday,

Up at 7am and Steve picked me up at 7:30 for a repeat of yesterday's trip. First we picked up his outboard which had been professionally diagnosed as having water in the wrong places. They blew everything out with compresses air and called it fixed. We ran it for about 10 minutes in the tank and then loaded it into the pick-up. Then we were off to Easton again to return the used batteries. They hadn't charged me the core charge yesterday so I was honor-bound to get to old ones back as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, Kathy was off to the grocery store with Donna which is always exciting.

When Steve and I returned, we mounted the outboard on his dinghy to head back our to our boats... but no luck. The motor would not fire. We pulled for about an hour...took the spark plugs out and dried them out but it just wouldn't start. After rowing me out to Sapphire, Steve was off for another bridge crossing to take the motor back to the shop. He was back later with a working outboard and some instructions on what to do when it gets severely flooded.

One of the little problems that we have been experiencing this summer is that every day there has been a little water under our engine. There is a large fiberglass pan under the engine that is about 8 inches deep. Any fluids that leak are easily identified and in this case had been identified as sea water. Our cooling system pumps sea water into a heat exchanger while another pump (water pump) moves antifreeze through the same heat exchanger and the rest of the engine. Anyway, the amount of water collecting under our engine had increased to about 1 cup per day of cold water which means that the sea water pump needed replacing. Sure enough, with a mirror and flashlight I could see water dripping our the weep holes that were put there for precisely this reason... when the seals wear, the water dripping gives you a little advanced warning that the pump is on it's way out.

Since I had a spare, and the pump is located on the front of the engine, the switch should be a piece of cake. By the time Ken brought Kathy and Donna back to the boat, I had the pump off and was getting ready to replace it with a the new one. I had Ken come down to inspect my work and we found that the drive tang (which for you motor folks, is just a reverse threaded nut with a tang brazed on that is screwed on to the end of the cam and drives the impeller) was worn and needed replacing as well. I made a list of all the Westerbeke parts that we needed ( including a rebuild kit for the bad pump) and got on the phone to the nearest dealer. Some of the parts were going to take a week for delivery so I put the new pump on and will take it off again when they arrive.

After a shower, we were off to town for water. We have four 5 gallon plastic containers and use around 10 gallons a day. With the boat show on the horizon, the public docks will be closed as of Sunday for 8 days so it's important that our tank is full. Since we're going to spend the weekend with Jack and Debbie, tomorrow will be our last chance for water.

Thursday...

The first item on our agenda today was to make sure our water tank was filled. We went to the hardware store and then walked to the State House which is only a few blocks from the water front. We just wandered around some of the narrow residential streets wondering what it would be like to live there. We filled our water jugs and returned to the boat . It was another perfect sunny day with 85 degree temps. I started on teak work and sanded more that I should have because it took me until about 5:00 to get a coat of varnish on everything. Then... we went on another water run to fill our portable tanks... our main tank is full. Kathy called the car people and they are going to be picking us up in front of our boat at 9am.