Argh and shiver me timbers, the fuking engine won't start…AGAIN!

It wold be easy to get despondent about now.  We had planned for just a two day stop in Monterey.  I’m glad we got to stay longer, this place is so beautiful but now at day 12 we are more than ready to move on.  Sometimes I find myself just staring out to sea thinking that I should be out there now.  I miss sailing and yesterday was such a perfect sailing day; clear skies and good wind.  Argghhh



So far we have spent the better part of 3 days prepping Malo for sea only to be shutdown the next morning buy that nasty party popper, Mr Diesel.  Three times that has happened.  He will run well after lots of attention throughout the day, but the next morning he refuses to get out of bed.  What an A-hole!

But I mustn't piss and wine into my own beer.  I know that and I’m also fortunate to get a reminder every day that I’ve had and still have it pretty darn good compared to other folks trials and tribulations.  



Just three slips down from Malo here in Monterey is a boat that often has a wheelchair parked next to it.  That chair belongs to the boat's owner who've we'e seen come and go.  So whenever I even get near a sorrowful thought for myself it instantly vanishes when I see or even think of that wheelchair sitting next to that old boat.  

It's Sunday, so no possibility of a mechanic today but hopefully Kevin can come back early next week.  In the mean time Bev and I picked ourselves up and did what we could to figure out what the problem was.  I consulted Nigel Calder (the Guru of Sailing Systems) “Boatowners Mechanical and Electrical Manual”, did a bit of googling on the issue and consulted with one of our marina neighbors.  We looked for telltale air bubbles in the bulb of our Racor filter and saw none.  That combined with our particular symptoms all left me convinced that we had a leak in the “high” side of our fuel system and that the line going from our fuel tank to our primary fuel filter was probably ok.  

With that in mind we set to work first cleaning all traces of fuel from the high-pressure side of the system and it’s adjacent areas.  Then we bled and started the engine, ran her for a while, shut her down and looked for new fuel.  We saw a couple of possibilities, so we dried them up and repeated the procedure. 

Bev was the first to spot it.  After repeated cleaning and then running the only place where fuel was still showing up was in a space on the #1, 2 & 3 injectors.  Same place on all three.  Number 4 remained dry.   You can see the little highlight, which is light reflected off the surface of the fuel, just to the right of the Q-tip in the above photo.  A fuel injector stack is well above my ability but I'm heartened that we may have very well found the source of our problems.  



So again I have great hope in my heart that we will be finally be able to escape this beautiful prison in which we have become embayed.  In the meantime we'll continue to soak up it’s beauty and culture with gratitude for all the we have, and for what we have-not…