Ann and Terry get ready to leave – they are off this morning to Philadelphia then New York. From there they will separate, Ann to go to visit friends in Vermont, and Terry to do some work in Chicago. Rather than leaving in the dinghy with heavy luggage, they opt, more sensibly for the water taxi.
As for us, Mike has a generator to fix and I need to give tea and sympathy and to act as his ‘gofer’. He reads the manual and our diesel engineering book, pulls the port stern cabin bed apart gets into his black hole.
He does the most obvious first, changing the primary fuel filter, spending ages cleaning up after he makes a mess with the fuel. He tries to start it. Nothing. Next he changes the secondary fuel filter. More mess. More cleanup. Nothing.
He then sits down and re-reads the manual. What has he missed? He takes the plate off the side of the fuel pump to see if the fuel solenoid is operating – this is unlikely to be the problem according to the manual but as there is nothing else left, it’s worth a go. He finds out that this doesn’t appear to be moving but as he’s never seen one before he’s not 100 per cent sure. He thinks it should be moving in and out when the generator turns over but can’t see anything happening. Hoping that it’s an electrical connection problem, he spends time following the wires back from the generator to find a point where he can attach the meter to test the power supply. When he tries to start it again he shoves the probe down onto the connector and the generator bursts into life. What a wonderful noise!
Concluding that the connector might need cleaning, he does just that and from that point, every time he starts the generator up, it starts first time. Clever boy!
Once he’s completely cleaned up again (using most of my kitchen paper and washing up liquid in the process) he has two well earned bottles of beer and some lobster bisque for lunch followed by a well earned nap.
I reward him again in the evening with crab linguine with chilli and garlic. Tomorrow we head for Pasadena, everything working once more (and no more having to use the hair drier in 30 second bursts).
Position: 38 deg 58 min N, 76 deg 28 min W
Distance so far: 2643 miles
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