Today Dave awoke with a renewed determination to fix all the motors that have been misbehaving. Truth is that motors just don’t like to sit idle. And since Apsaras has been back in Seattle, we’ve not gone on more than a weekend trip. So its not really very surprising that some maintenance is required on them. And the rest of the boat systems too.
After another Mexican breakfast, Dave started up the generator. Last night he had a brainstorm that maybe there was a small part that he didn’t reinstall when he rebuilt the generator last week. It was a small foam piece that appeared to be innocuous. But turns out that it moderated the air flow into the crank case. Without it, too much air was flowing into the crank case, which in turn caused the fuel pump not to be able to fill the carburetor with fuel when the generator was at full load. This sarved the engine causing it to quit. Once reinstalled, varoom! Its running again smoothly. Whew! That’s a relief because after having rebuilt the whole thing last week – the only thing remaining was to buy a new one.
Next up was the 2.5 HP engine. It sat with old gas in it for months – so Dave figures it needs a good carburetor clean out. And maybe a spark plug cleaning. Jim ran into town and bought a new gas can so that we had something we could use to drain the old fuel out of the engine into. Then fill it with fresh fuel. Dave then takes the engine apart and puts it back together, and Voila! It runs like a champ and starts on the first pull. Sometimes engines just need love and attention according to Dave.
As Dave seemed on a roll fixing things, Melissa decided to throw in a monkey wrench and break something. While closing the fridge lid, the gas strut that helps keep it open and makes it easier to lift – the mount came loose from the side. This is a pain, but never fear, because epoxy is here! Dave figures he can squish in a bunch of epoxy to harden up the wood side of the fridge and then rescrew in the strut mount. Jim suggested just turning the mount by 90 degrees. But Dave was sure that the epoxy would do the trick. Alas after two rounds of epoxying – Dave did it Jim’s way, and then added two more stainless steel screws for good measure. And just like that another fix it job crossed off the list. Not that there aren’t still an endless supply of jobs. You shouldn’t buy a boat unless you love fixing stuff.
Jim then decided to whip the sheets. No that isn’t some bizarre S&M game. Whipping is the term for securing the end of a rope so it doesn’t fray.
And on a boat – the sheets are the ropes that control the sails. So Jim had noticed that the ropes on the jib sail were quite frayed. So he whipped them into shape!
Chores done, later that afternoon, Jim, Margaret and Melissa wandered into town to browse through the art galleries and shops. Melissa and Margaret did their best to buy new clothes but ultimately nothing they liked fit right.
We discovered that the fruit we brought in from the farmer's market also had fruit flies. So another flurry of vacuuming them up occurred to try and cut back their numbers.
We continued to work on the murder mystery game. The game led us to another website where there were clearly codes to be cracked. A right shift cypher. Took us days - but Melissa finally brute force cracked the first sentence which led us to realize that you needed a three digit sequence to crack each sentence. But where to find the three digit codes? We puzzle and puzzle and puzzle…
Dinner was a fresh made pesto pasta with smoked chicken, tiny grape tomatoes, with a side of cucamelon and mung bean salad. Mmmm. After which we watched “Working Girl”.