News from the right coast.

Headed out to the boat as the mechanic guys say they can look at the engine today. Pretty nice day, got an early start with one minor complication, water was out. So down to Starbucks we head, which nicely enough has an Autozone next door. Had to pick up another battery. Dropped Betty off at the house and sat in traffic all the way up 95 to 495. Finally lightened up about 30 miles from the boat.

Anyway complaints aside I emptied out the lazarette and looked at the tangle of wires and decided to replace the only remaining original battery. Used one of my winches to get the battery on board, stupid things weigh 12 tons. So +1 there the winch worked. Got the battery hooked up and amazingly enough the mechanic showed up, and I'll be damned if the engine didn't just turn over and kind of chug a bit on the stored fuel and water in the system. Diddled the plumbing from the engine to the through hull so that instead of the sea cooling the heat exchanger the water in the bucket did it instead. We are after all some 1/4 mile from the water. I learned that you don't ever just connect a hose directly to one of these engines, if you have an issue getting it started you can hydro-lock it. Then you are totally screwed. Rather than having a radiator like on car there is a cooling loop in the engine that takes seawater from outside the hull and runs it up to a heat exchanger that sits on the engine, after it takes the heat from the coolant, standard antifreeze, it is routed to the a box that the exhaust manifold is connected to which cools and "cleans" the exhaust. Then both the water and the cooled exhaust is ejected over the side from an above water through hull. It's all pretty simple, but the hoses are quite long. The pressure from the exhaust cycle forces the water out the hoses, but if there is no pressure the exhaust box will get filled with water which will back fill into the engine, and as water can't be compressed you now have a major repair on your hands Anyway to make this long story short, the engine cranked for a couple minutes then fired right up. I was so excited! Remember when we bought this boat I expected the engine to be a seized lump of useless cast iron. We ran it for 20-30 minutes to get it up to operating temp, engaged the transmission and spun the prop a little bit. Then looked for leaks, none, no extra water, no extra fuel, no oil pumping from unfindable cracks. Simply amazeballs. I am over the moon. Just saved a good 8 boat bucks there.

I'll have to figure out how to add video so you to can enjoy my unbelievably exciting engine sounds and watch the belts spinning, until then just make loud raspberry noises.

Other things we have done, Betty got a backrest completed.

I scared myself by starting to work on the electrical system:

I think we are going to spend the weekend there either this weekend or next, not sure. Betty has been working killer hours and needs a break.

Made my first trip to West Marine, yeah it's worse than Toys-R-Us for adults. 

That's it for this weeks scintillating installment of "This Oldy Boat". 

LA!