We had a nice late start so that we could get in sink with the tide at Lopez pass. We hit the pass just after slack and had no problem negiotiating the maze like entrance. Inside the pass, the channel opens up and you have a beutiful view of Lopez island with Orcas in the background. The wind was again blowing close to zero so we had the motor running. About miday is started "hunting." Sometimes it would speed up and then slow down. Hmm, looks like it is time to do some work this afternoon. Of course after an hour of hunting the motor just dies. We are sitting in the middle of not just one, but two ferry channels. We pull out the jib and let Mike try to use the little wind to keep us from hitting an Island and/or a ferry. I dive below and start looking. The first thing I check is the Air filter. Man is it dirty. Man, I thought it was cleaned in Olympia. I guess not. So I set out to clean it up. Clean, clean, clean. Put it back on. Try starting it. Nothing. Okay, I don't want to try and crank it too much and crap out the battery, so it is time to think. I check the injectors for fuel and make sure there is no air in the line ... looks okay to me. How 'bout a little starter fluid? Turns out my buddy Nigel says that I can use WD-40 and spray it directly into the air filter intake. I try it. The engine sputters and springs to life. Yeah. We head off. After about an hour the motor starts sputtering again. I decide to detour to West Sound marina instead of Dear Harbor (since there is a boat yard there, the only boat yard in the San Juans). It turns out that Diane, my brother's wife knows the owners. I must explain, one of the reason's that we are on Orcas is that Diane grew up here, and her mother, Judy, still lives here.
That evening Diane's mother picks us up and takes us to Christiana's for dinner. A very nice dinner. Probably one of the best meals that we've had up in the NW.
Thursday
Mike and Dianne take a small plane out of Orcas for SeaTac and then off to NY for another wedding. Hopefully they had a good time, we didn't quite have our shit together yet.
As an added bonus, Judy lent us Diane's old college car to use for a couple of days. This is a good thing since we had a ton of Laundry and grocery shopping to do for our next set of guests. I spent the next couple of hours changing the primary fuel filter. Turns out my mechanics put a 2 micron filter in place for the primary which clogged up pretty quickly. The only spare that I have was also 2 microns, so I will try and pick up a spare later.
That night we have pizza in east sound. Nice view for a pizza joint.
No comments:
Post a Comment