The days are picking up speed and we have established a stop date.
Jennifer has found that if we put stuff in storage in Port Orchard we will save several hundred dollars over the five months will be gone. We will, in fact, not return to Seattle for eight months, as we need to go to Phoenix and then Atlanta before returning here. The savings become significant.
While in a straight line, Port Orchard is very close, unless you take the ferry, it is a few hours.
We used the stove for Sunday brunch. It works very well, though lighting the burners is a multi-minute process. On the other hand, for the very first time the percolator actually percolated. This demonstrates that the kerosene stove puts out more heat than the alcohol stove. Something we all know from reading BTU tables, but it is very interesting to see it in action.
I have been wrestling with whether to put in a second electric lift pump to prime the engine. I had plumbed the engine feed line through the diaphragm pump for the Nickerson diesel fireplace.
I believed that the fuel could be drawn through the diaphragm pump without the pump working. In previous tests, this did not seem to be true.
There had never been an electrical lift pump for the engine, but when the mechanical lift pump was malfunctioning a second pump made sense.
I performed a final test yesterday, I found the engine ran through fine through the fireplace pump when it was turned off: I had dismounted the pump from the wall in the basement and created a kink in the line feeding the engine. Turning on the pump created enough pressure to expand the kink. Properly mounting the pump relieved the kink and all worked well.
My body and mind decided I’d been working many too many hours and too many days without a break. I consciously took Sunday afternoon off, and parts of Monday afternoon I produced very little work.
However, I did replace the fill fixture for the port water bladder. The fixture that was there was cheap and the lid never threaded correctly. The process involved cutting a hole 1/8 of an inch wider than the hole that was there.
I re-bedded the deck hatch furthest aft. This hatch was dry during rain, but if water broke over the bow and flowed all the way back to the dodger, it would rain below deck. The bedding compound had dried out, and turned brown.
Fortunately, this means that the hatch was easily lifted from the deck. The mounting flange has several concentric grooves which need to be individually cleaned. This is what took the most time. Before bedding the hatch, I taped an outline of the hatch on the deck using a razor blade to trace around the hatch onto the tape.
With 3M 4000 the bedding was quite quick and easy. On Thursday I’ll tighten the screws and trim off the compound that has squeezed out.
The outboard has been mounted with a lock, the kerosene holding tank properly mounted in the cockpit locker and I have been working on understanding the AIS issues.
When I go up the mast later this week, I’ll take a look at the antenna.
Storing everything in Port Orchard means that the last day to-do projects will be this Tuesday. After that, we’ll be moving things in the Port Orchard, provisioning and storing aboard the boat.
The dinghy bottom still needs to be painted, gudgeons mounted, and the outboard tested.
Along the way we’ve done some Internet shopping and bought a handheld vacuum cleaner and an EIRB (necessary for insurance), repaired the oar for the dinghy, and announced on LinkedIn and Facebook that I have have stopped working.
Today, Wednesday, Bill Haimes of Island Marine Instruments will swing our compass for us. Incidentally, this will be the first time we’ve moved CaroBabbo from her berth in several months.
