Moving Along
26 April 2011 | South Daytona Beach
Sunny and very warm
We dropped the mooring lines in Stuart on a rising tide and got out of Dodge. It turned out to be a great two months and we are now happy to be back on our home on the water. A couple of minor irritations have developed, don'tcha know? The Yahama outboard doesn't like to go above a certain RPM, it appears something in the drive train starts slipping and unloading the motor, so no go-fast for us for a while. This one just might be beyond my pay-grade.
Our dinghy started loosing air. It turns out one of the valve stems is broken and it won't seal properly. Oh darn. I figure replacing the valve will also be beyond my pay=grade so I though of attempting a couple of work-arounds.
The first attempt didn't cut it. I tried holding the valve stem in its closed position with a little silicone. It almost worked but a little air is still leaking so on to plan"B". The valve cover has a rubber seal, so I though if I made a bushing to place under the seal it would help compress the seal and we might be good to go until we found someone who could replace the valve properly. Guess what? It worked, no air leaking so plan "B" is now our temporary/permanent fix.
Now for the more serious issue. The pull cord broke on our Honda generator, arggg! Finding a Honda mechanic around here is like finding a Congressman or woman who "gets it". So with my trusty dusty orange handled multi-screw driver I attacked my Honda. All but a few of the srews were so rusted they wouldn't budge. Now what? Of course, drill them out, right? Oops, two screws out and the cordless drill battery quit, so now what? Well we needed AC power to charge the drill, to charge the laptop and to power or regular drill. So onto the radio to find a marina with deep enough water for us. Found one in South Daytona and will spend the night here. Drilled all the rusted screws, started removing the side panels, the front covers, found bolts hidden under other covers and so on and so on. When you're venturing into the unknown it's usually a good idea to keep track of the order in which things come apart. An "oh sh-t" usually occurs when a part drops out onto the cockpit floor, I had several of those moments. Actually I must give credit to the engineers, the starter cord assembly came off easily once I removed the gas tank and unplugged all the electrical circuits. A little wondering which way to wind the new cord onto the assembly and we were ready to reassemble. To make this three hour ordeal shorter, it works!!! It's all back together except one small, "where did this come from" part. But the bottom line is we are go to go. So we'll watch some movies tonight and blast off tomorrow.
Cheers,