Ah, this is the time of year when Curt is in his glory! All of the mysterious small packages that have arrived in front of our front door throughout the winter months are finally opened and put to use. For those of you who don't know, Curt is an eBay addict. He claims that this is a necessity as a used boat owner/do it yourselfer, otherwise we might be living in a tent...or on the boat...
It was a soggy weekend, but Curt managed to take down the low pressure fuel system from the diesel engine. On the agenda for the next few weeks is replacement of primary and secondary fuel filters and the fuel feed pump. Why you may ask? Well, we've tried to bring Aquavit to Martha's Vineyard 2 times - both times our engine has cut out after 5 hours of motoring. Yes, motoring on our SAILBOAT. Wind was either in the wrong direction, too strong, or didn't exist. Motoring happens.
One of these times, we actually had to call for a tow at sea. Now that sounds exciting, but truly, it was not. It involved Curt being very pissed off and mumbling things to himself while he tried to rebuild the engine and test every system on the boat, while Susie, Chuck and I pretended that everything was perfectly fine while we waited for 1 hour for a tow boat to pull us into Vineyard Haven harbor (humiliated). Curt believes a faulty pump is to blame. We shall see on our next trip to the Vine-yahd if he is right. Otherwise, I will have to conclude that Aquavit has a serious attitude problem and obviously some sort of score to settle with MV. Maybe we should stick to Block Island...
Well, your boat will surely stall out if the engine was forced to work past its limit. Anyway, how did the engine repair go? I hope Curt didn’t have a hard time fixing it. It can be quite a hassle when you get cut on the middle of your trip, but this things happen to most people at some point. At least now, you know up to how much you can push the engine without risking another stall out.
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