DAY 9 WESTPORT

We're still here, tied up at the dock in a dense fog.

Yesterday we were a couple miles out when Judy noticed that the engine exhaust sounded different, and our little vacuum breaker tube that allows the exhaust line to drain when the engine is shut off was spitting an irregular water flow. We had low raw water flow. We immediately did a 180 and tied up at the dock and started trying to find out what was restricting the flow.

The first thing we did was clean the water filter, which is located at the lowest point on the boat in the lazerette. Naturally it was buryed under a pile of stuff including our 15hp outboard. This did not cure the problem, so next I rebuilt the raw water pump, even though it had been rebuilt only a couple of months ago and looked to be in good condition, this also did no good, so I did the next, most reliable thing, and called Denny at the Volvo engine dealer in Seattle. Since the next step I was thinking about was to hire a diver to check the thru hull for obstructions I figured it would be less expensive to talk to Denny and get his advice first.

While waiting for his return call I was working on other projects that had become possible with all the crap out of the lazerette. I checked the tranny oil, adjusted the shaft packing gland, reconnected a bonding wire that had worked loose, and adjusted my SSB ground plane foil. As I sat in the bottom of the boat looking around for more things to do I noticed the raw water valve on our generator set cooling line was open. Bingo! This line comes off the same thru hull, and was allowing air to get sucked into the main engine water line. I shut it off, started up the engine and everything was good. Denny called about this time and when I explained what happened he was kind enough not to call me any names, but did say that tying the water systems together was a bad bad thing. I believe.

By the time all this transpired it was to late for us to leave Westport as the tide at Newport would be ebbing when we arrived. Its usually best to cross a bar on a rising tide.

So here we are, waiting for the fog to lift a bit, then off we go.