(Well, “underway” to a marina a few hundred yards from the boatyard, anyway. Which is progress.)
NOTE: Portions of “today”‘s entry and the Nov. 26 entry have been re-assigned to their proper days, fixing a kinda of schizophrenic time-hopping situation I created while posting underway.
Escape from Key West
Not that Key West is a bad place. But just between us #HowNotToSailers, I was quite relieved to get out of the boat yard on Stock Island. Ever since the yard manager threatened to “splash [me] right now” after I had the temerity to ask if I was gonna be penalized extra yard day fees due to their delays.
ANYwho, our friend Bill and I GTFOutta there on Saturday the 23rd, but it was a close thing. We were third in line for the 85-ton travel lift, after they hauled out a “sinker” and splashed our new friend Adam aboard s/v Tapestry.
I had told the yard that we’d need to bleed the engine after running the fuel dry over a month ago, and Jacie drifting around Florida Bay since then.
And bleed the engine, I did. For at least a couple of hours.
I made sure to top off the Racor filter housing again with diesel, as the new filter had sucked some of it up since I put it in. Then I used the lever on the something-or-other pump in line after that, until I got a trickle of diesel to come out of the bleed nut on top of the secondary filter. Then I cracked the bleed nut on top of the injector pump, and alternated cranking the engine and hand-cranking the engine until fuel come out there.
But the engine still wouldn’t run. And each crank was taking a toll on the old house batteries. I had (and have) new batteries sitting on the cabin sole right now; but I really didn’t want to be doing a battery swap, which is a kind of gymnastics/weightlifting extravaganza that takes a while. Nope, I wanted to get to the actual marina I’d booked for Saturday evening, so we could stage our departure in some facsimile of comfort.
Finally, after several calls to Blowtorch Mike, I managed–with a combo of cranking the engine every time the batteries came back up to nominal, and hand-cranking with a big metal wand in between–to get fuel to leak out at the cylinder heads. But the engine still wouldn’t run.
So, minutes before trying to call an “expert,” and probably giving up on getting out of the yard before Monday (and no doubt having a major blowout with the manager), I tightened the nuts back up where the injector lines come into the cylinder heads, and told Our Friend Bill, “Okay, one more time, for shits and giggles.”
And she fired up.
As a matter of fact, for the next day, she purred smoother than I’d heard in some time. (Are you kidding me? After a month adrift after being abandoned in a storm? That is one tough lady!)
So, after a week in the boatyard, a survey–an amazingly successful one, a new anchor and chain, a crewmate flying down and cooling his heels for a few days, and plenty of adrenaline…I had Bill take the rented minivan just up the street to the Perry Marina. And motored into the next chapter for Jacie Sails.
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