It's just another day. Our outboard came back last evening after getting it's carburetor rebuilt. We clamped it to the stern rail for the night. This morning, I grabbed our hose and put on the "muffs" that go around the bottom of the motor that delivers water to the intake so it will pump it though the engine keeping it cool. With the hose all hooked up and attached to the motor, I clipped on the fuel tank, squeezed the fuel bulb, pulled out the choke and gave the primer bulb a pump or two and pulled the cord. Nothing. Not even a hint of starting. Pull, pull, pull--over and over. Check the on/off switch(on), and just keep pulling. After about 40 pulls, it sputters to life. I revved the engine and it still didn't run very well. It no longer leaked fuel so at least that problem was solved. After a minute of so, I pushed in the choke lever and returned the handle to it's idle position. Cough, cough and stall!! OK, check everything--fuel, choke,etc and pull and pull and pull. It's dead. I hiked up to the office and let the manager(Dana) know. He's going to collect it and take it back to the repair man. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Better to find out now it's screwed up than after we leave.
On to the next project. It's a beautiful sunny morning so it's time to rip out the seals on the port light windows(can you see where this is going?). We grabbed the seals for the windows I brought back and took off the first window and we compared the new seals to the window. Not even close!!! Way to thick and too big to fit what we have. Now I have 14 seals that don't fit. Just more ballast I guess till we find someone that can use them. OK, we have a bunch of the material we had used when we first replace the seals a year ago. They had never stayed stuck to the frames and they were just a bit off size but it sure beat the 32 year old stuff that was there. The company I'd bought the rubber from recommended using a type of Super Glue that comes in a gel. It failed quickly at holding the rubber onto the bronze frames. This time, we had two tubes of stuff made to hold glass and building material where you want them to stay. Dow Corning #795. So, with new seal material in hand(actually some of the old stuff we'd used earlier), we started back in on the first port light. Tracy pulled out the old seal(not hard at all as the glue had failed) and then started scraping what was left out of the trough the seal came out of. We even used a Dremel to get as much out as we could. Once clean, we squeezed a nice small bead of chalk(the Dow Corning 795) into the trough that holds the rubber and then pushed the rubber seal into the chalk. Once that was done and we cleaned up the over flow, we reinstalled it in it's frame on the boat. One, two, three done before Mother Nature decided that we didn't really need to work on the port lights today. It had all started out so very sunny and now the sky was full of dark clouds, lightening and thunder. It started out slowly and built to a downpour. We're just glad we got the first three done and back on before it started to pour. As it was, the third went on as it was pouring outside. All three are cinched down tightly so the new glue can do it's job--seal the window.
The rain has now let up and I'm glad to say that none of the three port lights we did have leaked at all. Now all we have to do it let the boat dry out and we can do a couple more.
For lunch, each of us had a treat. Tracy had bought some scollops a few days ago. I'd bought some "Golden Curry" by S & B. We bought the Medium sauce as we had never tried it before. We've seen these boxes of curry mix all over the Pacific and finally bought some. Well, let me tell you. It was great! Great curry flavor. Tracy added carrot, onion and potato and a bit of red bell peppers for more color. I'm allergic to scollops so while she had hers, I had mine. Both of us had a great lunch.
Once that was finished and the rain stopped, I started in on port light #4 while Tracy did the dishes. Off the wall it came and out came the old seal. The glue had totally failed and the seal just fell out of it's trough. Great job Super Glue! I cleaned the trough and laid in the new caulk and put in the new seal. Back up it went and on to window #5. Same process and all the port lights we needed to have done were done. It was time to head up the hill for a shower to get cleaned up. We are off to Singapore tomorrow morning for more boat stuff. Gee what a surprise.