Jun finished his work last week and we got delayed getting out to Ant due to a birthday party on Thursday and helping Terry and Christine off Teka Nova get off for the UK. Finally dropped the lines(thanks to Leslie and Philip off Carina) and took off. Now this harbor is full of coral and so there is a narrow channel getting boats in and out. We wound our way through the channel and called Harbor Control to ask permission to leave. Last time, we had a much larger fishing boat come right up our tail as we headed out. This time, we asked permission. "Granted" was the radio reply. About three minutes later, the engine slowly ground to a halt and stalled!!! CR-P!!! I headed below while Tracy grabbed the VHF radio and called the Harbor Control for assistance. I meanwhile, grabbed a 1/2" wrench and headed into the engine room. Since it has happened before, I figured we had more air in the diesel lines. I loosened the bolt on the injector pump and turned on the small electric pump that feeds fuel through the lines. Out came tons of air! When Jun had finished his work, we started the engine and ran it for 2+ hours at different speeds while still tied to the marina. Any where from 1500 to 2500 rpms. At 2500, that's this engines max rpm with no load. Up and down. Two minutes up and ten back at idle, over and over. All ran just fine. Now suddenly, we have air back in the lines!

Once I bled the air out, she started right up. I went on deck and thanked the men in their small dinghies that had come out from shore to assist us. One already had a line from our bow to his boat. With the engine running, we thanked him and took control and headed out making it out through the narrow channel to the ocean.

We ran the engine at 1750rpms, much higher than the last trip and made good time to Ant--about 5 hours. Dropped the hook and settled in to try and relax after what had happened. On the trip out, we made a list of things that still needed to be done before we headed out, hopefully by Thursday. Now, we settled in and did a bit of relaxing. I took a swim to check the anchor while Tracy took a nap.

Sunday morning we got up and started our chores. While Tracy took off the net on our lifelines on the forward starboard side(keeps the "kids" on board), I went into the engine room to check every clamp and hose that carries fuel to the engine. When I opened the lid on the Racor filter, it was almost half full of air!! We were lucky it had not fouled the engine all oaver again. I refilled the filter and bled the system all over again. We should be ready for leaving on Monday.

Back on deck, I helped Tracy install the "new" net onto the lifelines. Zephyr came with it and it's done a great job at keeping our kitties on board. We'd salvaged some old fishing net that the big commercial fishing boats used and cut a bunch of it to replace ours as after the many years it's been in place, it has developed lots of holes where the thread has rotted out and the wave kept crashing into it during our last trip. With that job done, We uncovered the main sail and installed battens back in the sail and attached reefing lines so we will be prepared for the next trip. We'd removed or untied the reefing lines when we removed the mainsail for repairs last month. Once that was done(as is the custom, it had started blowing just as we took the cover off the sail to do the installation making the sail fly all over the place and making what we were doing much harder) we put on our swim suits, masks and fins and dove into the 85 degree water and swam to the island. Not a tremendous amount to see but sure beats working on the boat.
As we sat at anchor that night, we looked over the side and saw what we called "lightening fish". Just like the lightening bugs we had when I was a kid back in Pennsylvania, these fish or what ever they were, glowed just like the bugs I grew up with. It was something we had never seen before. After about 15 minutes, off they swam. No idea what they are so if you have any info, please post it in the comments. We'd like to know.
We upped the anchor on Monday morning and headed out just after 0800. We'd hit the mid tide time and were hit but tons of swirling eddies that threw poor Zephyr all over the place as we made our way though the narrow channel to the ocean from the calm waters inside the atoll. It was a rough and somewhat scary. Luckily when we were cruising in Canada ,we had to go through numerous "narrows" that had the same effect on our boat. Our time in those "rapids" prepared us for what we had.
We made good time back even though we were facing 15+ knot winds right on the nose and arrived at the marina in about 5.5 hours.
Jun is back on board this morning trying to figure out where the air is getting in. I'll let you know what he figures out. I've done all I can think of. Guess we will see.