As I woke up this morning, it dawned on me that going out to test the engine today was not going to be a simple thing. There are many things that have to be done to change a boat from liveaboard status to cruising status. Mainly, there are many things have to be stowed, secured, tied down, etc. This process can take hours. Although being in the ICW means that I’m not going to encounter 10 foot seas, some of these big motorboats that don’t know what they’re doing can make huge wakes that can really rock a sailboat around. In addition to all the other stuff, I realized that I’d also have to disconnect my 70 lb air conditioner and stow it, pull my shore power cord and stow it, then reconnect them after I got back. A lot of time and effort.
Then I thought to myself, “What do I plan to do if nothing has changed, if all my efforts did nothing, if the engine still stalls at higher RPM. Will I came back into the marina? Why? What more troubleshooting is there to do? There are no fuel leaks, I’ve replaced 85% of the components on the side where there is/was an air leak. I’ve already spent nearly $900 on parts and the slip fees at the marina that I hadn’t budgeted for. I can’t afford much more this month. I’m exhausted and burned out dealing with this engine. I think I would just continue north at low RPM and 2-3 knots for a few days or a couple of weeks. I just need a change and to stop burning money.
So, I decided that I’m just going to leave tomorrow and head north regardless. Of course first I’m going to go back and forth just south of the marina for a couple hours to test the engine. The channel has enough wide spots for about 2 miles south of here where I can coast safely out of the channel and drop my anchor with enough room that I won’t go aground while I bleed the engine. I plan to go slowly out of the marina until I’m in such a space, then bring the RPM up to high cruise (2300 or so) for at least an hour (or until it quits). If it quits, I’ll coast to the side, anchor, bleed the engine, then try it again at 2000 RPM. If I can get an hour out of it, then that will be my max cruising speed. If not, I’ll repeat the above and try again at 1500 RPM, and so on until I know the max RPM I can cruise at, then will turn north.
There is a big, almost 30-mile stretch of ICW north of here where there are no suitable anchorages for my boat. If all the forementioned engine testing takes too long and if, at the cruise speed I end up limited to, I’m not able to make it to that 30-mile-away anchorage before night fall, I will anchor at the anchorage here that I spent a few days at and leave early the next morning. So, unless something drastic happens, I don’t intend to return to this marina.
That being decided, I headed to the Esplanade with my computer for some yoga and then to the coffee shop to try to catch up on my blog. My youngest son, Andrei, and his girlfriend, Ashlyn, planned to visit me mid-day on their way from Orlando to St. Augustine, and the bottom cleaner was going to do my boat sometime in the morning. I planned to use the afternoon to work on my depth sounders and prep the boat for getting underway.
I had a wonderful lunch with Andrei and Ashlyn back at Caribbean Jacks. I was both excited and sad to hear that they’re planning to move to Colorado in the upcoming few weeks. Excited because I think it will be good for them and they both love Colorado, and sad because Andrei will be so far away! With Nicholay in Guatamala soon, and Andrei in Colorado, it will just be Alek and I on the East Coast. I knew these days would be coming, but it’s still very difficult. I miss my boys very much.
The bottom cleaner called me up to tell me that he had finished cleaning my boat and wanted to let me know that the bottom had been covered with barnacles. He suggested it was time for a new bottom job. That was bad and unexpected news. I had paid for a high-end paint that was supposed to last three years when I got it done a year and a half ago. I’d been having it cleaned every two weeks since at DIYC, and those guys always said my bottom looked great (and the boat’s too.) 😉 And, now I’m being told it is time for a new bottom paint job! WTF! Well, that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. A bottom job costs between $3k and $6k depending on where you are. Not sure why all the barnacles. It’s only been a bit over three weeks since it was done at DIYC. That cost me $126 (twice of what I was paying my guys at DIYC.) Ah, well. I plan to get to the point where I can start cleaning it myself, but too much has been going on for me to start that anytime soon.
After lunch, Andrei and Ashlyn headed up to St. Augustine, and I headed back to the boat to see what was going on with my depth sounders. The good news is that my main depth sounder seemed to be working fine again! Not sure what was going on with it, but I’m leaving it alone! As long as I have one operable depth sounder, I’m good. The second one, though, is being wonky. At first it shows nothing, then after a long while, it starts showing depths that are way off, like 200+ feet, or it seemed to like 87.6 feet for awhile. I cleaned the connection of its cable with the GPS, but that didn’t help. I then completely emptied my starboard cockpit locker so I could get down and see the actual transducer stuck against the hull. I thought perhaps it had come loose (it was held there with silicone sealant), or the liquid inside it had come out, but everything seemed normal. So, we’ll see what it reads tomorrow. Not sure what’s going on. I may no longer have two redundant systems. 🙁
I inflated the paddleboard again to stow it back on the boat and could immediately hear the air hissing out of the same leaks, so as I feared, my efforts yesterday were a complete waste of time. Then I folded up my bicycle and stowed it in the V-berth, installed a bracket on my new fuel shutoff valve to keep it from putting stress on the hose it’s attached to when the boat’s in motion, then took a shower, had some toast and liverwurst, and will soon check weather for tomorrow before hitting the sack.
High tide is around 8:30 tomorrow, so I will get up, stow my air conditioner, disconnect my shore power (all of which should take about 45 minutes), then cast off and see if anything that I’ve spent a week doing to the engine has done any good.
Sorry for the lack of photos this post.
Bottom jobs don’t last! Months after I bought my boat and the bottom was done, large chunks of bottom paint were falling off. Could be anything from bad prep work or less effective paint due to changes to protect the environment to needing to soda blast down to the gel coat.
$3,000+ for a bottom job every 12-18mos. is out of the question. I’m researching possibilities for a longer lasting bottom paint and will share info with you as I gather it.
Yeah, there’s got to be something out there that will last. I purposely opted for the high-end, “new technology” product that supposedly had great reviews, etc. Paid an extra $500 for what was supposed to be an extra year’s worth of protection. (Which is worth it, just for the haul-out fee.) But, looks either like the product is bunk, or (more likely) the yard which did the work didn’t do a good job. Frustrating. I look forward to hearing what you find out.