Yesterday, after surfing the internet, we thought we had found a place here in Johor Bahru that sold what's called a "propeller nut zinc". This is a zinc anode that's screwed onto the end of the propeller that slowly rots away being made of zinc which seawater goes after before it goes after steel. I don't know all the particulars about it but I do know that it's important to have decent chunks of zinc attached to the bottom of your boat. A few weeks ago, I attached my last one to the back end of the prop as the last on, installed in Kudat, Malaysia had lived a quick life and was shot. Normally, they should last about a year, this one made it about 5 months. Being in the confines of Sutera Marina in Kota Kinabalu is where we think most of the damage was done. It just ate it apart. Anyway, we thought we had a place to get more without a trip to Singapore. We even called him and in a sort of English, he told me to bring one out if I had one. I'd saved the what was left of the last one so we took off for the bus to get us closer to town and the store. Somehow, we either missed the bus or it never came as we waited almost an hour. A "red" cab came along(cheapest cab in town) and we grabbed it showing the address we needed to go to. Off we went with the driver explaining that it was quite a ways to the store. We knew that as we had looked up it's position on Google Earth. Quite a while later, we made the turn off the main road and headed down the side road toward the store. We knew it was along the waterfront so we figured we could get a nice lunch while we were there. WRONG! This place was out in the middle of no where and there was no chance of any restaurant being any where near this store. It was actually more of a boat yard with at least one sailboat out of the water getting work done. I was shown to the manager who looked at the zinc I'd bought and he sent one of his men into the small chicken wire enclosed storage area and he came back with a link that bore little resemblance to what I'd bought. They didn't have what we needed. When we got out of the cab, we told him to just wait as we figured A--we wouldn't be here long, B--they weren't a "store" and there was little chance they would have it, and C--there was no chance we would find another cab let alone a bus to get back to town. Within 5 minutes, we were back in the cab and headed back for town. We told the driver to just take us to one of the shopping malls and we could look around there for a while and have lunch. In the end, we were glad we had chosen one of the "red" cabs as the fare was about 55 ringitts, far less than half of what we would have paid for a "blue" cab.

Once back at the marina, while Tracy put away what we had bought, I grabbed our hose and hooked it up the our outboard again. Just wanted to play it safe and make sure it would start after my working on it the day before. I hooked up the fuel line(even opened the air vent), primed the cylinders and gave the cord a quick pull. She started right up and ran well. Unfortunately, about three minutes later it died. Try as I might, it was not going to restart. I checked everything I could think of and then threw in the towel. I went up the the marina office to see if they knew a good mechanic. They knew exactly who to take it to and if I would bring up the motor, they would take it right to him. How's that for service? Twenty minutes later, off we went. A short time later, we turned off one of the streets and headed down a dirt road past a house where I then saw a man working on not just one outboard, but three. All were in a state of being ripped apart. I was accompanied by not only one of the marina's management staff but also one of the workers. We unloaded the motor and took it over to his "shop". I looked inside the building(about 20 X 75 feet) behind where he was working and it was littered about three feet deep in parts of new and old outboard motor pieces. You name the manufacturer and it had to be in there. the Marina Manager told the man to start working our my motor as soon as possible, by passing the three he already had apart. I jumped in and explained through the manager that that wasn't necessary. I'd wait my turn. No reason to get pushy. I told him everything I had done and left him with all the new parts I'd already had shipped in for the carburetor just incase that was the problem again. I expect I will see it some time in the next few days. To have a dependable outboard that starts when you pull the cord, I'm happy to wait.

The picture for today is of our "propeller nut" zinc anode. As you can easily see, the one on the left is no where near as pretty as the one on the right. You can see why I thought it was shot.