The Care and Feeding of THE BOAT

  Let me start by stating the obvious, that it's been nearly a year since my last post, which was number 300 since I started this blog. If this was to be my last post, I like the sound of number 301, and there's a lot to tell about.
  Touching on some of the mechanical issues mentioned in my last post seems to make the most sense, so that's where I'll start, but wandering through the timeline is a promise.
  We did wind up replacing our dedicated generator battery last August, and then the four house batteries in September of last year. The six inverter batteries are hanging in there, mainly because they "cut out" automatically when the voltage drops to a set level, something the house batteries don't do. We don't get the performance out of them like we would do fresh ones, but they have enough life in them to allow the inverter to do it's job, which is make AC current without the generator running. Having that capability is nice when we are running, as the fridge is running on AC, and we can cook too, using the crock pot, coffee pot or microwave oven. The inverter bank will be replaced before winter if it gets into the budget.
  I mentioned de-scaling the engines last summer, but somehow I think I've hit on the reason those 3116 Cats have been so easy to overheat, and that's because I neglected the air cleaners as being a culprit in my ongoing mystery of keeping the mains running cool. I cleaned the K&N air filters last summer, using OxyClean in a bucket filled partially with club soda. I let 'em soak until the grease rose to the top of the bucket, brought to the surface with the carbonation in the club soda. A liter is less than a buck in most stores, and you only need enough to cover the filters in a five gallon bucket. The filter elements come pearly white, get rinsed with fresh water, air dried, and then coated with filter oil. A year later the mains have not exceeded 195 degrees on any outing. That's a winner, folks, even with the heat and high ocean temperatures we are having.
  Another small habit that I've adhered to, and this is going to sound silly, is to run the blowers whenever we're running at cruise. Now, you folks with gas motors should already know how important it is to run blowers with gas engines, but us diesel motor owners get lax in that department, at least I did, because the explosion hazard is all but eliminated with diesels, so one starts to neglect those blower motors. No more.
  Recently, I had forgotten to turn on those blower motors when we raised the hook at a Tampa Bay anchorage and headed for home. The starboard engine started running a bit hot which hadn't been happening since I cleaned the air filters. It was a very hot, and humid day, and I'd remembered something Celeste at Key West Engines told me a couple of years ago. She said that even though the water temperature plays a part in engine temperature during the warm months, the ambient air temperature was just as important, if not more important. Somehow I had forgotten that little morsel of information.
  I flipped on the blowers, but apparently the engine room temperature was already too great for my two 4 inch blowers to overcome. What we did was stop the motors, set on the hook with a cold beer or two with the cockpit hatch open and the blowers on. When we took off again, both engines ran at their prescribed 195 degrees all the way home. Wee wee wee!
  Over last winter the air horns on Swing Set started sounding like a sick duck. The compressor is mounted along with the horns up at the bow in the anchor locker, not an easy place to get to, but I could reach in with one arm and remove the compressor. It was corroded but still spun when hooked up to 12 volts, but it wasn't spinning enough to get the amount of air through the horns for them to emit enough volume to chase a seagull off the bow railing, much less announce a "slow pass", or "get on your side of the channel" to other boaters on our behalf.
  After messing around ordering and trying a couple of aftermarket compressors from our favorite mail order place, I took a different tack and mounted electric horns on the flybridge on the starboard side of the bridge. They're loud, they were cheap, (even stainless), and wiring them was a snap. WoLo is the brand. (I had also had a cheap moment and bought an electric "car horn", but realized how lame that was. I wound up mounting it on our golf cart.)
  While I was in the mood to replace stuff that didn't work, our remote spotlight was next in my sights. The original equipment is an aluminum housed monstrosity that had stopped rotating years ago, and recently the light wouldn't even go on. The aluminum housing had been scraped and painted at least once, and the possibility of doing that again with a dead spotlight was, well, remote. A new one like the old one is $1200!
  Amazon came to the rescue in the form of a plastic housed Jabsco unit for less than $200. The base of the unit just fit on the little raised portion of the flybridge where the original one sat. If it hadn't, I was prepared to make a base from Starboard, but I didn't have to. The hardest thing was cutting out a hole in the dash to mount the toggle to control the light, but using care that I normally do in those sticky situations, I was able to replace the touch pad for the original light (no toggle, just buttons. Hated it.) even though it is much smaller. I used quick disconnects on the seven wires coming from the light to the controller so when it comes to replacing it in a few years, it'll be a "plug and play" operation. No, the light put out by the Jabsco is not as bright as the original, but I can count on one hand as to how many times I used the old spot, but they come standard on many brands. We also carry a hand-held unit.

  In this picture you can see where I mounted the electric horns, as well as the spotlight. You won't notice that the sunshade is new too, but it is.
  When we replaced the bimini back in Key West, a new screen was ordered from Boatswain's Locker, but marrying it to the side curtains posed a problem, and we "made do" until a better solution was found, and that came in the form of Chuck Henry of Suncoast Marine Canvas based in Palm Harbor, Fl.
  I had gotten two bids for a new wrap around sunshade from a couple of vendors recommended from some other boat owners at the marina, but then I called Chuck and he came by within a couple of days to give me a bid, which we did in another couple of days. He beat the other two bids by hundreds of dollars, and he had the job done in the promised time. He pulls a trailer and does the work on site, and he is meticulous. He was a pleasure to work with for sure. The screen is now all one piece and it tucks nicely up under the overhang of the forepeak, hiding those unsightly black streaks that appear after rain rolls off of that part of the boat.
  This was last spring, and about the same time our attention was directed again to the SeaDek that covered our steps in the cockpit. Two of the pads began "melting" within days of installation, (after much tribulations dealing with SeaDek and the vendor) and since we were on a roll with improvements to Swing Set, Rosie found a vendor in the area who installed  PlasDeck, a faux teak product that we've been considering for years. We called them.
  Jonathan Bigalow was the "them", a one man show who does marine flooring in the Tampa/St.Pete area, helming a company named Underway Custom Marine Flooring. In March of this year, Jonathan came to Marker 1 Marina with some ideas and some samples, and we arrived at a plan to improve the looks of Swing Set, outside and inside.

  The PlasDeck is installed on the steps into the cockpit and leading to the flybridge in this photo. The product is a dense plastic composite that is installed in strips, glued down with 3M 5200, and the "caulking" is molded into the strips at the appropriate intervals. The trim is applied and gaps are caulked with the 3M 5200, and everything is sanded with a belt sander. It looks and feels like real wood and we don't expect any "melting" issues.

  Look here, we had Jonathan install the PlasDeck on the swim platform! There were a couple of reasons for pulling the trigger and springing for the $1600 to cover this area, one was because the seagulls were habitually leaving us presents. Marine bird poop is like concrete, and removing it every weekend was getting tedious, not only that, but the hardware on the platform was continually rusting. We removed the offending hardware and installed a new handrail for the swim ladder. Any bird poop now cleans right off, usually with just a hose, and we think it looks nifty as hell.

  While we were at it, we had Jonathan install new carpet in the salon. We helped some by first removing the carpet wrapped trim around the parameter and replacing it with oak trim matching the rest of the interior. We did the dinette area too, and seams were put in to allow me to roll up just the center section of the carpet to allow the opening of the salon hatches to the engine compartment.
  One item that was time consuming was covering some holes in the salon deck that were made at the factory for the hi-lo table that we immediately removed as it took up too much room in our small salon. Originally, I took a piece of 1/4" aluminum plating and just bolted it over the section where the two 5" holes where that housed the bases for the table. That left a "bump", and I dealt with that by cutting a section of the carpet pad out where the aluminum plate was, and that quick fix served us well for over seven years but was a pain in the butt when it came time to install the carpet after rolling it up to access the engine room hatches. Since we were getting some nice new carpet, and we took the time to replace the nasty carpeted trim with stained oak, I wanted to do a proper job of filling in those two holes from the hi-lo table.
  The holes were located in the port engine hatch which has a thick foam and rubber insulating material on the underside of it. I had planned to bolt the same aluminum plate I already had to the underside of the hatch, so I cut out a section of the insulation on the underside to match the size of the plate. That's when I found that the fiberglass comprising the underside of both hatches has some structural "tunnels" and one was right where I wanted the plate to be. I used my Dremel tool to cut out part of one "tunnel" to allow the aluminum plate to be bolted flush against the bottom side of the hatch. The hatch itself is constructed of two layers of fiberglass sandwiching a closed cell foam core, making the hatch itself exactly one inch thick. I used a five inch hole saw to cut two disks from 1/2" thick starboard for each hole, and cemented them into each hole after through bolting the plate to the hatch. I finished off the topside by caulking the tops of the counter-sunk bolt heads, along with the gap around the starboard disks inset into the hatch. The result was a flat floor which is stronger or as strong as the original. Jonathan was impressed.
  Jonathan wasn't as timely in completing the work as we had first discussed, and we had to cancel some possible out of town plans, but eventually, with some diplomatic efforts on my part, we were able to get the job done by the end of June. We like Jonathan and hope to have him do some additional work at a later date, so I was careful not to upset his apparent fragile sensitivities.
  In the course of the last year, we've been busy just enjoying the barrier islands and beaches in the area. Some friends from our boating days up on the Alton Pool of the Mississippi moved down here and we've been seeing them when we can, along with some visitors from "up north" who were nice enough to come visit us in the last year.
 But mechanical issues still regularly rear their ugly heads, along with some additional improvements to some components.
  Along the way, the anchor windlass motor quit working. I called Good Windlass and ordered a new motor after discussing the problem and some possible other reasons for the fault with Tom Ring at the company there. After trying some fixes prescribed by him, we went ahead with getting a new motor shipped to us. The new motor came in record time, and I realized that I should have told Tom to ship the new motor at standard rates, there was no need to overnight the new motor to us. As it was, the new motor came and I immediately saw it was the wrong one. Had I been able to install it, it wouldn't have worked, but a call to the company quickly put things right. Our motor was sent to another guy somewhere, and his was sent to us. I don't know if he tried to install the wrong motor in his boat. When we got the right motor, we sent our defective one back to Good Windlass to be rebuilt by them and they sent it back. Now we have a spare, and will probably never need it.
  We also replaced the covers on the windlass switches on the foredeck. The original equipment is two plastic switch covers that had already been replaced years ago. They were painted before installing to prevent the U.V. damage that attacks most plastics, but they were also painted again at least once. I found some really nice stainless steel covers online and debated whether to spring for them, but eventually did and was happy with the exact fit and finish they provided.
  The windlass rollers on the bow pulpit were in need of replacing too, as the original black plastic rollers were cracking badly and I was waiting for the day that they would break outright. I called my "go to" Sea Ray parts guy at Marine Max at Lake of the Ozarks, Morgan. He contacted Sea Ray directly and inquired on our behalf about getting some new rollers, as they were not to be found anywhere in the size we needed from anywhere we normally find hard to find items.
  After about two months of waiting to hear back from Sea Ray, I called Morgan and pulled the plug on the search, not wanting to waste any more of his time. I'm certain he was relieved. I went to a Marine Salvage yard here in St. Petersburg, Don's Marine Salvage, recommended to us by the local Marine Max dealer in Clearwater. Don's had no salvaged rollers, but did have some nice sturdy nylon rollers that I had seen online for half the money, but they were too wide to fit our pulpit. I bought the cheaper rollers online and cut them down, 1/16" on each side with my circular saw, and then sanded them down to an exact fit with my orbital sander. It was time consuming, but now we have new rollers in white that look "mahvelous dahling".
  Speaking of anchors...blog readers may remember when, back in 2012, I "lost" our bow anchor while in Cape Coral, having run over my own anchor line while deploying our hook on the Caloosahatchee River one afternoon. Well, I did it again. I plead "guilty with an explanation", your Honor.
  We were anchored off the beach at Three Rookers Bar one afternoon, and since I have learned to greatly respect the tidal swings here along the Florida coast, we have avoided backing into the beach with Swing Set, like all the other boaters do, instead, just using our dinghy to mingle with the multitude of "sand boaters". That particular afternoon, having apparently lost my mind, having already had our hook in close proximity to the beach, I backed us around with the stern toward the shallower water and, after backing as far as I safely could, dropped one of our Danforth anchors off the swim platform, and then tightened the bow line to bring us back out to safer, deeper, water, albeit closer to the "action" on the beach which was lined up like sardines with various vessels. Mistake.
  In the course of the afternoon, having consumed our share of barley pops, a nap seemed to be in order. Wind was out of the southwest, blowing toward the beach at a modest rate, but we were hooked in solidly and we were only looking for a short respite, maybe 30 minutes at most. Adhering to the adage we learned from an old friend a while back, "a nap is on top of the covers, under the covers is outright goin' to bed!", we laid down on top of the covers for a quick battery charge.
  I woke to the bow slapping against some waves, and they weren't from a passing Jet Ski. I looked outside and found a gray threatening sky, and NO other boats on the beach. Everyone else had wisely vacated the area due to an approaching storm. In retrospect, I should have stayed put with our bow anchor entrenched into the sea bottom, holding us safely off of the beach, and since most storms don't last long in these cases, we probably could have ridden it out. But, no.
  Rosie and I worked together to get the stern anchor retrieved, which again, I should have tied a buoy to and cut loose. But, no. We had great difficulty retrieving the stern anchor as the wind was strong on our bow and we were in danger of grounding when we got right over the anchor in order to pull it straight up as the tide had receded. I was maneuvering the boat without much success, given the wind and was about to punt when Rosie yelled that she had the anchor up and on the swim platform. The shaft on the anchor was bent at a 90 degree angle at the flukes. That 18 pound anchor was ruined.
  Our next focus was getting the bow anchor up, and the wind had increased to a great extent. The inline fuse on the windlass kept kicking out due to the stress put on the system given the wind and my desire to keep us off the beach. As it was, I couldn't overcome the wind and was dangerously close to grounding us. At one point I was able to spin us around, not a good thing to do with waves pounding the stern, but I appeared to have gotten the bow anchor lifted off the bottom. The windlass was winding up with no problem and soon the line was completely on deck and into the anchor locker, however, our chain and anchor was still on the bottom. I had run over the anchor line and sliced it into with the port prop, and at that point didn't know that several feet of 9/19" anchor line was wrapped around the port prop. But we were free and we headed to the barn.
  On the way home the sky cleared up, and having attempted to get on plane, I could feel vibration and I was able to isolate it to the port side and I did suspect I had line wrapped around something. Once back in our slip, my mind raced with the various solutions to our problem of having lost our expensive bow anchor. But first Rosie noticed that the stern bilge pump was on. I expected to see a hole in the hull when I opened the cockpit hatch to inspect for damage, but all I found was the pump running with no water coming in. I tried to get the pump to stop by tapping the float switch and then disconnecting it entirely, but was unable to do so. I wound up switching the pump off at the cockpit fuse panel, with plans to attack that issue later. We went to bed eventually and I could think of little else but how to get our bow anchor back.
  At the crack of dawn, I was up and rigging up the Hookah Max after a quick dive under the boat to ascertain my suspicion that there was line wrapped around our port side running gear. With my air supply in place, I was able to quickly get the line off the prop and prepared to go back to the beach and get our anchor.
  I was going to just use the dinghy to head up to Three Rookers, but the sky was overcast and the wind was a bit brisk for the ride, plus I realized that if we even found the anchor, it was sure to be stuck deep into the sand and I'd need the horsepower of Swing Set to break it free. One thing we do when setting a hook is to put a "floaty" on our ground tackle at the juncture of the rope and chain, to keep the splice from chaffing on the bottom. I was counting on locating the float, but wasn't sure about how high it would be floating with 25 feet of chain pulling it down.
  Using the track of our movements on the previous day, I was able to make a good guess as to where the anchor was, and in spite of the gray sky, was able to see our anchor float bobbing just about a foot under the surface. Rosie grabbed the boat hook and made a valiant attempt to snare the float and chain.
  Now, I don't think it would be cruel to guess that Rosie may have trouble snagging a plastic duck from the duck pond attraction at the local school carnival, but it's a reality folks. She was able to finally grab the stainless rigging running from the float to the anchor line, but the harness broke and she only came up with the float, leaving the anchor and chain in about 9 feet of water. I "ain't as young as I used to be", so free diving in even nine feet of water could pose a serious problem for me, but the Hookah Max is the great equalizer, but even better is the "man overboard" button on our GPS, and I hit it as soon as the harness on the float broke.
  We stuck Swing Set in place with our 22 pound Danforth that is also kept on deck at the bow, (Yes, that's THREE anchors we have at our disposal.) and I deployed the dinghy to go look for our ground tackle. I took my portable Garmin with me from the helm, the one I had hit the man overboard button on, and was able to approximate the location, dropped the small Danforth housed in the dinghy anchor locker and started a free dive search for the anchor line. After about ten tries, my foot felt rope and I snatched up what was left of our anchor line and triumphantly waved it over my head to show Rosie that success was in my grasp. Our 45 pound bow anchor had other ideas.
  Nearly 24 hours of shifting sand and pounding waves had all but completely buried what was already a heaving anchor, and I only had the small unstable dinghy to use as a base to pull up all that weight. Right there I should have tied another float to what I had in hand and went to get the big hardware in the form of a 40 foot boat to drag up our anchor, but I was on a mission and wasn't wanting to risk another "entanglement" with our anchor line and running gear. I used the power of the waves at my disposal, tying the line as tight as I could to the handles on the dinghy, and eventually the bouncing of me and the dinghy pulled the anchor from the deep sand.
  We gathered up our assorted belongings, having only lost about 25 feet of anchor line in the process, plus our 18 pound Danforth anchor. In the course of the next couple of weeks, finding another 18 pound anchor that fit exactly in the bow anchor chocks proved to be the hardest puzzle to solve, even with a visit back to Dan's Marine Salvage. He must have a thousand used anchors there, none of them being the right size. I finally found one at the right price from Walmart. I hate shopping at Walmart, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do.
  I got new anchor line from Miami Cordage, saving over $100 dollars from just about anyone else locally or online. We could have used the old line, but it was now five years old and taking a chance with anchor line is foolish enough. I make enough mistakes by accident without making them on purpose, so we sprung for new line. Finding a rigger to splice the line to our chain was harder to do.
  Now, I can splice a three strand line, and our 22 pound Danforth has such a splice, but this splice has got to get through the windlass gypsy, and my splices wind up being about the size of a baseball. I found a rigger in St. Pete who was willing to do the trick for $25, but even though he admitted it was about a 30 minute job, we had to drop it off on a Friday and pick it up the next day, as per his explicit instructions. That's about an hour drive each way from our marina. Do the math, four hours of driving to get a $25 splice done. but ya gotta do what ya gotta do.
  With the expense of the 18 pound Danforth and new 9/16" line and having it spliced, my mistake of anchoring near the beach cost us around $250. Ask me if we'll do that again.
  The upside of all that calamity was my decision to make our 22 pound Danforth easier to deploy. For years I've had it mounted on the bow rail on a hangar, leaving the shaft sticking up about six inches from the top of the rail. I always thought it was tacky, but readily available trumps tacky when it comes to anchors, but having the time to reflect on the issue some, I arrived at a better solution. I obtained a 90 degree bow rail stanchion and mounted it on the deck, just forward of our fender holders, then I used one half of the hangar I had been using, mounting it sideways on the bow rail. This setup allowed me to insert the anchor rod into the stanchion, and hook the other end of the rod into the hangar. The shaft and flukes of the anchor are lashed to the horizontal bar on the bow rail along with the 200 feet of line. I should post a picture, but don't have one at this writing, but it's a neat application and I wish I would have thought of it years ago, but didn't place the issue high on my priority list.
  What else?
  On one of our outings with some friends, the port engine started running poorly. I suspected a fuel issue, which was what it turned out to be, but I wasn't a clogged Racor filter like I first thought, but the secondary filter at the port engine was leaking at the seal rather profusely, to put it mildly. I tightened the filter and we got home with no issue. Once safely in our slip, I used a wrench to really tighten that screw on filter and that was a mistake. If a mistake is available, I keep making them.
  The next time we left the dock, we weren't even out to the channel and the port engine quick after giving up a couple of short complaints. Down below I went to find not only the port side secondly filter leaking, it was laying in the forward bilge, having divested itself from the confines of the port engine filter mount. I reinstalled it and away we went, but I wasn't done with it yet. The rubber seal on the filter was apparently all twisted up and it took a new filter to fix the problem. Good thing I keep spares onboard. One of them was installed before the next hiccup and that one then was awarded a substitute when one was needed. The fuel was pumped from the bilge with my vacuum pump and we were back to square one.
  Hey, what happened to the stern bilge pump issue, you may ask? After obtaining a new float switch, a new pump, and rewiring it, taking several hours over a couple of weekends, I got it to work, but I didn't have it wired the way it was supposed to be. Instead of having the switch breaking the ground wire, the only way I could get it to go off was by splicing into the hot wire. I knew it wasn't right, but it was the only way I could get it to work. The whole time I was working on that, we never went up to the instrument panel to see what was what. I was somewhat around of myself for "fixing" the pump without using the new switch or pump, when Rosie remarked, from the helm, that "hey, this light is on for the bilge pump on the test panel". The dim light began to flicker in the remote corners of my brainpan, and then it came on with full intensity. In the ensuing drama of our anchor retrieval weeks ago, I had apparently hit the "on" button for our stern bilge pump. The switch has an "auto", "off", and "on" position, and it had been years since I had to turn that switch to the "on" position and I had forgotten it even had one. Better late than never, I'd say. I wired the float switch back on the ground side. Hours of work could have been avoided by just stepping back and using my head. Boy, do I wish I had all those times back when that happened!
  On my last post I mentioned the fact that the aluminum motor mounts on the dinghy motor were dissolving. I finally got around to doing something about it, I guess I was having too much fun with everything else to give it much thought, but during a slack moment I tackled the issue.
  I wrapped a fabricated harness made from a dock line around the engine and lifted it off the dinghy with the winch on the dinghy davit. I cut new mounts from starboard, using a template made from both aluminum engine mounts, each barely intact after removing them.
  In no time at all, the Mercury was back on the new motor mounts, bolted snugly in place with some long winded bolts. I would defy anyone to steal our dingy motor in any quick order. In the midst of my celebration, (all completed tasks on a boat made by oneself, should always be accompanied by a thorough celebration) I noticed that a hose clamp on our inline fuel filter going from our outboard gas tank to the engine was missing. We can't have that can we?
  The filter was put in place while we were in The Bahamas, back in 2013. Having made the trip back to the U.S. and joining us faithfully during our exploits in the Florida Keys, our dinghy motor filter was firmly in place, hose clamp or not, so when I went to loosen the hose from the one end of the plastic filter, the nipple on the filter end just broke off completely. And there you have the beginnings of my next calamity of events.
  It was late in the day, but I was "lucky" to find someone to sell me an overpriced fuel filter from the parts department at our marina. I installed it properly and our Mercury started up with no issue, but in the weeks to come, each starting process seemed to get harder and harder. At least that's how it seems to me in reflecting on it.
  One weekend we made the trip down to a favorite island at the mouth of Tampa Bay. It's easily a 40 mile trip one way to Passage Key, but it's a pleasant ride on the inside, or the outside, as it were, and we found ourselves on the hook by three in the afternoon one Friday. Swing Set needs to be anchored quite a bit off the beach down there at Passage Key due to the shallows surrounding it, so I dropped the dinghy and cranked up the Merc to warm up. As the motor was warming, happily it seemed, it came to a sputtering stop, sounding like it had run out of fuel. I know the sound, trust me.
  I must have pulled on that starting rope a hundred times trying to start that engine again. Bulb on the fuel line was hard, kill switch was on, nothing seemed to be preventing our trusty Mercury from starting, but both of my arms gave out, and the waves made from passing boaters and tankers entering Tampa Bay were not adding to my "consternation".
  "Let's go", I said. "We're heading home. No sense being here with no way to get to the beach, and these waves are really pissing me off." Earlier I mentioned a time this year when I attempted to run our engines at cruise without flipping on the blower motors in the engine room. This was that time, by the way.
  In the past, certainly during my tenure at the beer factory, I've been able to solve problems, and I'm also a believer in coincidental occurrences being the reason for something not working. I've seen it happen that more than the failure of one component can happen at the same time, or nearly at the same time. In the course of the following weeks, I devoted at least the first several hours of our boating weekends looking into the problem of the Mercury not starting. First, I thought, "What did I do different that has made a normally reliable engine start giving me problems?" Sure, I'd replaced that fuel filter. Maybe the filter I installed was the wrong one, the microns being too tight and the element quickly clogged up. In fact, the filter was found to be an "under cowling" filter, not suited for the crap that comes straight from a grungy outboard motor tank. Before deciding to go purchase a "regular" inline fuel filter, I was messing with the lanyard kill switch on the motor handle and the red toggle came off in my hand. At this point is where my notion of coincidental issues being the reason for the motor not starting.
  I tried to bypass the kill switch to no success. I verified that I was getting no spark, so I ordered a new harness and also picked up a new inline fuel filter. The new harness gave me my spark back, but I had blockage in the fuel line, and while I was at it, I checked the fuel in the tank and yes, it had water in it.
  I put the offending fuel in a suitable container and went and bought a new fuel line, which was the new kind without the plastic liner that keeps the hose from disintegrating from the ethanol in the fuel. New line is also ethanol resistant, but doesn't have the liner that is susceptible to collapsing. I ascertained that I was getting fuel to the carburetor bowl, had spark, but nearly tore a rotator cup on my arm trying to get the engine to fire, but an application of starting fluid enabled the engine to fire right up immediately. I had carburetor problems for sure.
  I hadn't worked on a carburetor for years, not since my motorcycle riding days way back when, and I'd say I was "rusty", so I called a young guy at our marina that is trying to start a business doing mechanical and detailing work. I talked to his "mechanic" who suggested a replacement of the whole carburetor, as his charge of $100 per hour would soon exceed the cost of new carb if he had to rebuild it. I had to chew on that for a bit.
  I know that the littlest bit of anything can clog the jets in a small carburetor, so I figure it's just a matter of looking into the carb before ordering a $400 carb and paying someone to install it on my dime. So that's where I am now and I have more time than money.
  I ordered a service manual for our Mercury outboard, I viewed a few U-Tube videos addressing the servicing and adjusting a Mercury carburetor such as ours, and I've spent a couple of bucks buying some tools in order to do the job myself. I'll be way ahead if I can clean the carb myself and get the Mercury started.
  On my next post, I'll let you know if I was successful, but in the meantime, you might be able to hear my cheering in the next few days from where you sit.
  So that's a lot of stuff, right? In the course of a year it adds up, and if there's one thing I've learned, we need to always be prepared for something to go wrong each and every time we take the boat out. It happens even with new ones, we see it every weekend, and some of the new boats leave the factory with absolutely no way for the typical owner to do any work on them. We met someone just a couple of weeks ago with a new Regal pocket cruiser that had a generator mounted so far in an out of the way place, removing it was the only way to do the 100 hour servicing.
  At any rate, when these things happen, naturally I'm not happy. But I don't panic. Never panic. We both are of the mind that if it only takes money to solve a problem, it ain't a problem.