Well when i bought the boat the genset work 4 years ago. It has only 46 hours on it.  Now that the hot weather seems to be over, I started to get it running. It ran, but I was not happy with the water output so I started last weekend to replace the water impeller.  What a PIA. 3 out of the 4 screws came out easy without removing the pump.  The 4th screw was hard to get to.  I need to go to my favorite store, Harbor Freight to pick up a long flat small screw driver. 

Of course once I got the screw out it dropped down to never never land. I spent Sat & Sunday trying to find an impeller for the genset.  Do yourself a favor, go right to you local Cummins dealer.  It was as cheap and anything I could find on the internet. But what a poor design on the genset.  To get the cover off the flywheel, I had to remove the screws that hold the exhaust on the deck to move the cover just enough to get the impeller cover I dropped right in that never never land.  While I had the cover off, I found my screw that I dropped plus one other one that someone else dropped.

This weekend I will take some pict

The Admiral has been keeping me busy. She came up with an idea for a business and has no computer skills.  So over 3 weekends I built the site.  Now I hope it takes off by Christmas! 

http://www.embroideryexpressionsct.com/index.html

This summer, while talking to some of the new boat owners who are at our marina, I heard one of them talking about how often they go to Port Jeff.  Being on the Connecticut River in Middletown, I asked how many hours does it take them to get to Port Jefferson on Long Island. The Captain started to laugh, and he said the beach down river about 3 miles.  As I looked at him he started to tell me a story about someone who died and there is a Memorial Plaque on the beach in his memory.  I was taken back, since I did not know that the Memorial Plaque I put up 13 years ago created this story or was referenced as Port Jeff. 

A group of my friends and I have been running the river for almost 35 years now. This beach is where we would meet for the day or the weekend.  It would be the gathering point for the activities that we would participate for the weekend.  It is where I kids grew up together.  Jeff was just one of the guys that would help you or give you his shirt off his back if he needed to. 

After getting laid off in 1998, he lost his medical insurance.  That New Year’s Eve was a changing point for many of us.  No one had heard from Jeff for a couple of days.  Someone in his family went to his apartment, and he was on the floor in pain and could not move.  He was rushed to the hospital; only to find out he had terminal brain cancer. He never left the hospital and never got back to the Connecticut River that year.  We would all visit him, and would tell him he has to get better so we could make one more camping trip to the river. 

Jeff finally fell into a comma.  Members of the group would go and talk to him. Jeff would squeeze our hands and smile.  On the very last day, Andy and Cindy decided to bring some of the Connecticut River to him since it was obvious he would never make it to the river.  They stopped at Rocky Hill boat launch and filled a bottle of river water.  Once at the hospital, Jeff still in a coma, Cindy took some of the Connecticut River water and wiped his face with the water.  Cindy told Jeff that they brought the river to him.  Jeff smiled and gave a couple of chuckles.  Jeff passed away before Andy and Cindy could go down the elevator to the lobby.

For years I was going to write this up and post it somewhere.  This seamed to be the right time.  Jeff’s birthday would have been 3 weeks ago, and with the boaters of the Connecticut River calling that beach “Port Jeff”, it is time to let people know the story.  BTW, what does that Memorial Plaque say?  “Of Brother Jeff, 1961-1999, May We All Have a Place That Ties Us to Him” 

You can tell I have been busy enjoying the boat. Outside of putting in a new battery the boat has been running great until today.  The biological entity attached to the throttles malfunction today.  Went to start the boat and nothing happened, no click no nothing.  After going nuts for a couple of hours and talking to some of the other Captains around, something clicked.  Earlier this week, my Admiral was sanding down the rest of the wood in the helm area so I could start applying Jason's secret formula which works really good. She bumped the transmissions out of neutral.  Do I need to say any more?

All the mechanical is finished.  It does help to change your cap, wires, and rotor once in a while.  I have only had this boat for 3 years.  But I can tell you that a plastic rotor can rust to the distributor shaft.  Took 1.5 hours to get both of them off with some help with a friend. No wonder why near the end of the season one engine was running rough, spitting, and smell of gas when I tried to give it some power. Everything needed to be replaced. 

Next weekend, cover comes off, wash, wax and bottom paint. 

Well, I went to order my exhaust manifolds and heat risers for my port engine. I guess that this will not happen for a couple of months.  I called the Partman at Lighthouse Marine.  Last year I had ordered OSCO replacements and was real happy about the service and figured they had the records of what I purchased last year.  They did, but could not get me the OSCO since there was a delivery problem.  They could get me the the Merc replacement, but it was $300 more. So being the person that I am, I started to look for other supply companies that sold OSCO.  I found 12 others who also said the same thing. 

I called OSCO Marine directly.  It seems they have had a banner year since January.  For the 7.4L 454 Merc, they have on order from the foundry 750 units, and will be receiving the first 200 mid May. Since this was PM work, not a necessary item to be done, it looks like I will be doing this later.  Once the boat is in the water, I will be warming up the engine and using my infrared thermometer to look for hot spots.  If there is no real hotspots, I will wait until fall when I yank the boat. Can I finish up in 2 weeks?


 

Well I had to implement plan B on the bow rails.  I ran into a problem accessing 2 stanchions on ether side of the boat, just ahead of the forward bulk head. There are 2 cabinets on either side in the forward VBerth.  Neither one had access panels for the nuts under the stanchions.  Since I did not want to add more work by creating access panels, I was able to lift the bow rail and clean underneath the stanchions that were leaking and now caulked. 

The cabin hatch has been giving the admiral problems opening and closing.  The rollers were held in by brass wood screws.  So tonight I created some new mounts for rollers.  I used some aluminum 3/4 x 1/8 flat stock, tapped a threaded hole, used a couple of SS Screws and spacers