Updates and Fun

So after two weeks of working on the engine to rebuild the cooling system, I had it all back together. We started the engine and it came on fine and water was spitting out the transom! Well that joy was short lived because during the last step of reattaching the throttle line to the exhaust manifold, both bolts broke off into the manifold. I had misplaced the original bolts and decided to use the spare bolts we had on board. Turns out they were zinc coated and easily broke. I learned you must only use stainless steel!

Well that was almost 3 weeks ago. I spent the first week trying to extract the bolts. I bought the extracting tool but then broke off the tip of that tool into each bolt. So I then drove around looking for someone who could get the bolts out, fail. I gave it to a family mechanic and they were afraid to drill into it cuz it might break. I decided to just buy the whole manifold cover piece so I spent the next week calling every Yanmar dealer in the US looking for the part. They all gave me the same answer that it is in Japan and will take 2 weeks to come in. Great.

Well we wanted to leave Liberty asap so I was finally able to find a metal shop in annapolis that was able to remove the bolts and rethread them. So last weekend I hooked it up and even tho a small amount of water was leaking out of the manifold cover it was good enough for us and we hightailed it out of Liberty. This is only a temporary fix as we have the new part coming in from Japan. We made sure water was coming out of the back and only used the engine to get out of the slip. We quickly put up the sails and sailed the 5 hours to Herrington Harbour North. And again we only turned on the engine to pull into the slip. We made it!

So now that we are back here in HHN we decided to relax and enjoy ourselves while we wait for the engine part to come in. We went kayaking, dinghy riding, swimming, biking, and crabbing :)

Ofcourse our new used outboard that we were excited to use would not start so we were paddling once again. We might just bite the bullet and buy a new one since our crusing kitty will be larger now that we are staying longer.

O and we installed a new light and one 12 volt fan in the V-berth. It is really loud but gets the cooling job done!

-Joey