Louise wanted to do it. Good. If something were to happen to me, and I became incapacitated, a basic understanding of the engine, and it's subsystems would be invaluable to her. She removed the top of the diesel tank, after removing everything from the cockpit locker and crawling in. We both expected a tank full of diesel bug, and were a bit lost when repeated syphoning and scraping the bottom of the tank produced only clean, white diesel. Not one globular black lump in sight.
Curious.
Louise next removed the main rubber fuel hose that leads from the tank to the primary fuel filter and blew down it. A lot of resistance. Not blocked, but almost. Finally, a blob of rubber hose came out the other end.
There were more lumps in the filter. When she crawled out of the cockpit locker, fuel pipe in hand, things began to make sense.
This pipe was renewed in January, just over 3 months ago. It was soft and sticky, and clearly breaking up. Louise had bought it at a motor factors - it was not marked as 'marine grade'. I don't know what caused it to perish like that, salt, damp, or the diesel itself, but we'd found the problem, and learned another lesson. Buy marine grade fuel hose. A small section of hose connected to the engine, that had been in place for 16 months was still solid, and looked like new. On it's side was stamped 'Marine grade'.Ho hum. You live and learn.
We spent the rest of the day doing odd jobs - the ones you never do, 'cos they won't take long, but we'd rather go for a sail. That evening it started raining, and the wind picked up. The sound of the wind and rain against Ishtar's hull is lovely when you are tucked up warm inside, on a quiet safe mooring.
In the morning it was still pouring down, and we got soaked as we used the dinghy to go ashore where we'd arranged a lift home from my father.
An enjoyable weekend. Spolied a little by breaking down again, but, I guess, that is par for the course when you mess about in boats.
Our course, this weekend:
