This is the first post to The Sailors Place Blog.
The biggest thing, for me, on the horizon is planning a 11 day trip to the Delta on my sailboat, a Newport 30 Mk III, named the "Viking Lady".
I am really looking forward to this as I have not been able to sail anywhere near as much as I wanted to this year because of a "Gremlin" that got into my engine compartment shortly after I changed batteries in March. Some really strange "coincidences" happened as problems that cropped up were solved. I think I finally got everything fixed but it has been an ordeal that seemed to have no end.
First thing that happened was that after putting new batteries in the boat in March I found a number of things that did not work -- my AM/FM/CD radio, the Wind Point Instrument in the cockpit, and the Voltage Meter . I got everthing but the Wind Point Instrument fixed (still have that to work out) and then the day after the battery change, when I tried to start the engine it would not start.
A week later a new sailing friend I met through the Latitude 38 Crew List - Rob Cram - came down to sail and did some trouble shooting. Rob has some diesel engine experience which I do not have and was a real help. I thought it might have something to do with the Glow Plugs and as it happened, while checking circuits and wires we discovered a wire that had broken off its connector. As it turned out, when we re-connected the wire the engine started. The wire was part of the Glow Plug circuit so, in a way I was right but the reason it was broken was also my fault. The day the engine would not start, the first time, I had taken my inflatable dinghy out of the Lazarette and snagged the wire and broke it off of the connection.
Twice after that, when I got to the boat after it sat for a week, it would not start. Each time the fuel lines were bled, the engine started, we sailed and started the engine a couple of times in the process and everything worked fine. But a week later it would not start.
The third time after the boat sat for a week it would not start again so I, by myself, bled the fuel lines and in the process stripped one of the bleeding screws on the Secondary Fuel Filter. As a result I had to replace the bracket holding the fuel filter which took a month and a half to get.
Finally I found a mechanic that would come to my boat and work on it and he discovered that the second bleeding screw did not have the copper washer on it and very slowly was seeping out fuel and letting in air. I had taken that screw all of the way out the same time I stripped the other bleeding screw and the washer dropped off without me realising it. I did find it on the engine compartment floor, however, and saved it. I mentioned that I had found a copper washer, the mechanic said get it - I did - he put it on and that solved that problem.
However, after getting all of the air out of the fuel lines the engine still would not start. Ray said a couple of times he thought that I had a problem with the Glow Plugs. To make a long story short, I did have a problem with them as one did not even get warm and the other was just barely warm. Purchase and installation of two new glow plugs got the engine to start better than it ever has.
So -- engine is now working great and I went sailing the next week. While out for about an hour the throttle cable broke. I quickly set up a "Jury Rig" with a thin metal bar I had on a V-Berth shelf that was there when I bought the boat 4 years ago. That worked good enough to get us back into the slip. I replaced that cable and the gear shift cable at the same time and hopefully, now, the Gremlin is tired of causing me problems as I just got back from a full day of sailing yesterday and nothing broke or stopped working.
