Success!

We have success! The Dink has motivation. I walked up to the marina office this morning to discuss some kind of alternative to getting us back underway. One we had in mind was to rent a car, drive to the nearest Suzuki dealer, buy a new engine for about the same amount of money has we have already spent sitting here trying to get the Yamaha fixed, and be on our way. We would leave the Yamaha for them to do with as they pleased.

Much to my surprise I walked into the shop and there was the Yamaha puttering contently in the work stand. Not too long after that is was mounted back on the Dink and puttering contently once again. Some thought was given to making a hurried departure and being on our way to Cape May. When I say “some” I mean about 10 seconds worth. Pretty much every time we have made a hurried departure the day turned sour. There was weather that looked like it might catch us out in the middle of the bay and still and hour or more from our destination. More reason to spend another day or two here. But, knowing that we can leave rather than wondering when we will be able to leave makes all the difference. Besides, there was still a smelly leak in the head that would have been more than a little irritating to most people, let alone a couple of perfectionists. (Next to outboard motors marine heads have to be considered one of the most relentlessly troublesome and irritating systems on a boat.)

So, with nothing else much to do, Deb started the disassembly process. I offered to help but, truth to tell, the head on First Light is single occupancy only regardless of the purpose for the visit. Envision rebuilding anything mechanical and pretty gross while in a smelly phone booth with the door shut, and you will have a good idea of what kind of day she had. I kept asking if she needed anything and was around to help out any way I could. Which was mostly by reviewing the YouTube vid on the process and handing her parts and tools. By days end the head was working so much better, wasn't leaking any more, and the ambiance in First Light was much improved.

So now we are just waiting on the weather. One of the really helpful things about being at the Delaware City Marina is the daily “Captain's Meeting.” Each day at 1600 local they pull up the weather forecasts while offering the best information available, that of local knowledge. They know all the shallow spots, where and how the commercial traffic will be moving, the best bail out options in the bay, what the currents and tides do, and how those interact with prevailing winds to determine what kind of day it will be for those traveling by Looper style boats. Today's discussion suggested that tomorrow will be an okay day to go. But Deb and I are both pilots who spent nearly 6 years living on Kintala. We listen to what others have to offer but we make all own weather decisions. Our look at the weather suggested that tomorrow might be an okay day to go. At this moment there is a cold front lurking less than 100 miles to our west inbound. Two of the weather apps we use are suggesting winds in the 10 to 15 knot range for much of tomorrow. Ten to fifteen makes a sailboater smile. So far our experience suggest that 10 to 15 knots in 42 foot trawler, particularly with miles and miles of fetch, will make a trawler crew wish they were somewhere else. Have the wind and currents going nose to nose rather than moving side by side and the trawler crew will definitely wish they were somewhere else. So we are likely to be here another day or so. Still...

Success!

Patience

So the Yamaha that we hoped to have hanging on the back of the Dink today is still dead. It will be dead for some unknown amount of time yet. It looks like even a day's delay will lead to yet a longer delay as tomorrow's weather window is a one day only offer. The next opportunity to head down the bay without getting beat up by waves and wind? Maybe Thursday. Maybe Friday. Maybe not.

How did we get here? The first new part we ordered was the wrong part. The second new part that we ordered was delivered over a holiday weekend and wasn't installed until this morning. The engine ran for two minutes, died, and would not restart. The current theory is that a control module failure of some kind fried the first charge coil when we were in Chesapeake City. Now it has done in the new replacement charge coil as well. So a new control module and another new charge coil is on order. The new control module is due in tomorrow. A new charge coil? That remains a mystery. In the meantime, the fancy motor mount bracket on the dink remains empty.

One of the many things I didn't know about living on a boat is that it will leave one with just two options. Option first is to completely lose one's mind. Option second is to become a paragon of patience, acceptance, and calmness. I am caught somewhere in between the two. I haven't quite lost my mind. But it may have been temporarily misplaced. I am certainly not any kind of paragon of patience. But I don't have much choice in the matter. The fact is the world will unfold as it will with zero regard as to how I want, or intend, for it to unfold. All I can do is try to make the best decisions based on what I know at this very moment. That the next moment may render those decisions null and void is simply how the world works. It is how the world works for everyone.

So we will sit here for a while yet, holding with the idea that getting this motor fixed, whatever it takes and however long it takes, is the best decision. Had we known the future we could have spent the dock fees we have spent here at docks at the the end of each of the legs coming up. Had we done that we would likely be somewhere in the Hudson River right now, moving away from the coast and done with big water until we get to the Great Lakes. But that isn't what happened. So I guess, so long as we are sitting here watching our decisions fade into a past that didn't happen, I might as well hunt around and see if I can find what little of my mind remains.

We spend a lot of time doing this...

And cleaning things like the very very dirty bug/sun screens

And exploring the Delaware Fort State Park where we found this diving bell. I kid you not, someone had to be lowered under the water in this thing to do repairs on the locks. The only air they had was what was in the bell. Yikes.

And we watch the constant parade of boats that go by

Mostly I sit in the cockpit enjoying the breeze blowing down the side deck while I read and do my Duolingo Spanish lessons.

A view from the flybridge 

Yamaha Engine Blues

We have been sitting for several days trying to get our Yamaha 9.9 hp outboard repaired. It should have been a simple issue to resolve. Just replace a coil in the ignition system. The problem is getting the coil. The Yamaha dealership network apparently doesn't have a single one of them in inventory anywhere. The Factory will be glad to get one on its way, shipping time is anywhere from five to ten days, maybe more, depending on if they have to manufacture one before sending it to us. I never made friends with the Merc on Kintala's dink. After what looked like a budding relationship with Yamaha, our relationship appeared to hit a bit of a bump. I have little use for manufacturers who have such a skinny parts inventory on hand that a simple failure takes days to resolve. So who do I try next? Honda? Suzuki? We have had good relationships with motorcycles built by each. I wonder if their outboards are as good?

We found an after-market part that got here in two days but, as was not a total surprise, the part we ordered didn't actually fit. Then, as it turned out, that was not actually an after-market parts issue. The issue was that we were given the wrong part number to order. Having spent a good bit of my professional life trying to make sense of manufacturer's parts manuals, I can't find too much fault with that kind of mistake. And there is actually an upside. We could have ordered the number we were given from the factory (at five times the cost), waited five or more days, and then found out we had ordered the wrong part. 

This way we figured it out in two days. With the right part number in hand, Deb found another aftermarket one in stock. Word is it will be here Sunday. Okay. Unfortunately, it is a holiday weekend. The shop will not be working on the motor until Tuesday. That makes Wednesday the earliest we can leave. But at least we have a tentative date for being on our way. Which is better than not having a clue. In the meantime, we're enjoying being in a no-wake, protected channel over what promises to be a long holiday weekend of drunken boater antics. And for the moment, it doesn't get any better than that.

This is what a morning on the dock waiting looks like.

The facility here is really pretty. The grounds are landscaped nicely, there are a couple of parks along the waterway, and a brick path that walks the whole length of the channel.

There have been a pretty impressive collection of boats on this dock.