Friday, July 8, 2011

Stonington - At anchor

Our morning greeting
We awoke to a dense fog and not much wind. The fog lasted all day so we just stayed put in Stonington and perhaps we'll try for Block Island on Saturday. So Ann read on her Kindle and I loaded more programs on my iPad2. In the afternoon we took the dinghy to the local public dock and went for a walk downtown, such as it is. It's a small town but does have some interesting stores, mostly gift type shops.





A typical store in downtown Stonington
Taking Hoolie to his evening relief, we ran the outboard dry of gas. I refilled the tank but couldn't get the motor restarted (flooded?) I finally wound up rowing back to the boat, a real challenge in a rubber dink. Once back, the motor started without a problem (of course!!) I also worked on the genset. Somewhere on the boat I have a fitting that attaches a 3/4 inch hose to a 1/2 inch hose but it was nowhere to be found (after a two hour search!) Presently the 3/4 inch hose goes to a 5/8 inch adapter and then to a 1/2 inch adapter, two fittings - that may impede the flow of cooling water, at least that's one of the working theories. More tests will follow whenever we finally get to Block Island and we have a few layover days. My next thought is just to put a bucket of water directly on the input to the impeller pump and measure the output about 1 foot down the line, without going through the engine. That should tell me whether the pump itself is okay or not at 10 to 12 liters/minute. The test will bypass all other components of the cooling system.

Weekend races - for grade schoolers
Presently we're due for thunderstorms, they have missed us so far to the north but the radar shows they're headed directly for us now. We're snug and well anchored so we should be fine.

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