What to expect

Rants, missives and occcasional updates about where Masquerade is located and what we are up to.

Friday, November 3, 2006

Still in Santa Barbara...

We are still in the Santa Barbara marina, we had planned to be here for 3 or 4 days but now hope to be out before they start charging us double. They encourage the transient boats to move on by increasing the rates after two weeks.

We had hoped to be down to Long Beach or Newport but had to change our plans. We had started to smell some diesel fuel back in Monterey, but could not find a fuel leak. While warming up the engine so I could do an oil change I once again looked for the leak. This time with the engine running I found that the injection pump was dripping profusely. Unfortunately the pump is buried by various engine parts, so that the exhaust manifold/heat exchanger needed to come off first. We shipped the pump off to be rebuilt and waited over the weekend for it to come back. We put it back on Wednesday, replacing all the parts that had to be taken off earlier. No joy with the rebuilt pump. The fuel cutoff was installed backwards so the engine would only run if the kill switch was pressed in. Not only that but the throttle control was bad as well, and would only run at full open. So we had to dismantle the exhaust and heat exchanger again and remove the pump to be send back.

Hopefully this can be corrected quickly and we can get the engine running again soon. The dock is going to get expensive starting Friday.

The good news is that we found the issue before we left the US. This would be a much more difficult problem to fix in Mexico. Shipping parts internationally can be complicated and expensive. Once again I am being taught the need to find problems as soon as we notice that something feels wrong. Of course, I once again waited a few more days than I should have.