Monday, October 30th (Day 23) - Dowry Creek Marina to Oriental
Temp 62. Water temp 68. Winds from the SW at 10-15. Sunny
44 nautical miles today (674.5 total trip miles)
As promised, here is Laura's jack-o-lantern she carved yesterday. She named it "Punkie".
No alarm today as we only had about 45 miles to Oriental. By 8am we were ready to go so I took in our power cord, started the engine and pulled our docklines. As I pulled the last line and jumped back on the helm, I could hear the engine tapping. Crap!
After backing out of the slip, we sat there a few minutes trying to figure out if we should just go to Oriental (where we have friends with a car and a marina dock reserved) or tie back up here. Since the tapping was not as loud as Saturday, I decided to keep going and hope that the engine wouldn't "go to bits" along the way.
As we turned west toward Belhaven and back on the ICW, there was a whole train of boats coming down the channel. We slowly motored in front of two catamarans and gradually pulled away from them. Wow. This never happens. We don't pass other boats. They must have been going slow to conserve fuel or something.
An hour or so later we turned south down the Pungo River, rolled out the jib and reduced engine RPM (made the tapping almost go away...). This was my view from the helm.
It was a pretty day on the water with LOTS of power and sailboats heading south. I said on Saturday we saw 2-3 boats, today it was 25-30.
As we turned SW to cross the Pamlico River, we pulled in the jib because the winds were right on the nose. I was a little worried that this was going to be our same fate motoring up the Neuse in a couple hours only that body of water is much more open so usually higher seas. I started looking for possible anchorages around the Bay River (just before the Neuse) if the seas there were not nice.
It was a calm ride for most of the day as we used the jib on and off for help when the winds were not on the nose. The engine tapping was not getting worse so I was hopeful we would make Oriental without any additional problems.
As we turn up the Neuse from the Bay River, the winds were only 12-14 (true winds) and seas less then 1 foot. Wow! From past experience, this river can be bad because it's very open and fairly shallow. Not today. No sailing because the winds were right on the nose but the boat motored along nicely at 5.5 knots instead of our normal 6 because of the wind on our bow.
Just at 3:30pm we motored between the outer channel markers leading into Whittaker Creek. This is a notoriously shallow channel but I had good tracks on my chartplotter from previous passages. At one point we had less than 1 foot of water under our keel but never "touched". We turned down the creek between the two marinas and saw our friends D and Don waiting for us at the open slip. This is a very narrow channel so I SLOWLY turned into the slip between the 6 pilings. Laura did her normal great job of getting us tied up then we had a nice reunion with long-time friends.
There are essentially no tides here because we are inside the Outer Banks. Water levels are driven by wind and air pressure. South or West winds blow the water out of Oriental while North or East winds blow it in. Just 10-15 knots of wind can change the water lever over a foot. Today it was about mid level. Any big south winds and we probably wouldn't be able to make it out the channel without hitting bottom.
If you come this way and want to know the water level, you can check the Oriental Town Dock website.
We had a nice cocktail hour then dinner with D and Don on Second Wind.
The engine tapping stopped as we pulled into the slip.
My arm continues to improve but not good enough for flute yet.
Tuesday, October 31st to Thursday, November 2nd (Days 24, 25 and 26)
Temps cooling with highs in 60s and lows in 40s
At Zimmerman's Marina in Oriental for the next week or so.
Tuesday morning we slept in then had our normal coffee and breakfast. Later in the morning, I started the engine and it wasn't tapping. But it seemed to be running rough and not smooth like normal. A few knowledgeable folks I've talked to said the tapping could be a bad fuel injector. This seems possible since it comes and goes. If it was something in the valve-train, the sound would more likely stay. A bent push-rod isn't going to straighten out....
Since I had spare fuel injectors on the boat, I decided to change them after the engine cooled down. I've done this 3 times before (in the past 17 years with this engine) and this time there were no problems removing the old injectors and installing the new ones. But, while trying to install the fuel return line I started having issues. The fittings wouldn't line up with the return line and tops of the injectors. I could get 3 of the 4 barrel-bolts installed but the 4th wouldn't line up. After a couple hours working on my knees, I decided to take a break.
I eventually had to try several scenarios of which order to install the bolts before finding the correct method to get them all installed. After that, it was just tightening up the fuel return line, loosening up the fuel fittings into the new injectors and bleeding the lines by turning over the engine. 10 minutes later the engine was running again and seemed much smoother. I'm "cautiously optimistic" that I've fixed the problem.
The winds filled in from the north (as predicted) and the water level at our dock went up over a foot.
We had D and Don over for grilled burgers and several bottles of wine / alcohol. Full disclosure that most of these bottles were not full when we started. This was several hours later. Not sure why the picture looks a little weird. Maybe it was because of Halloween! (more likely a wacky angle with the selfie-stick.)
Wednesday morning I ran the engine again and it smoothed out after just a few seconds. It does seem better.
Laura and D drove to New Bern for shopping and I worked a few boat jobs including filling the water tank which was below "E" then worked on the blog.
D and Don took us out to dinner with their car at Gary's Down East Seafood in Arapahoe. We had gone there for my birthday dinner 3 years ago and I still remembered their awesome fried oysters. We had a very nice evening and everyone enjoyed the dinner and company. The fried oysters were just as good as I remembered.
Thursday morning is was only 61 in our cabin - even with the heat on. It had gone down to high 30s here last night and our boat is not well insulated for that.
New engine?
For several years I've thought about replacing our now 42 year old Perkins engine. The tapping from the last week brought it up again in my mind. One of the possible replacement engines from my previous research was a Beta Marine diesel. I like these diesels because they are not electronically controlled (read easier to fix) and Don told me the manufacturer was just outside Oriental. Plus, they are a Kubota engine that is marinized by Beta Marine. Lot's of Kubota's out there.
Yesterday I started an email conversation with Beta Marine and they had experience with replacing my Perkins 4.154 with a Beta 62T (62 = horsepower, T=turbo charged). After a few back-and-forths, I found that the marina where we were staying was a dealer for them. What a coincidence!
Later in the morning I walked up to the office and had a conversation with the yard manager Eric. He told me they had lots of experience with the Beta engines and were currently in the middle of (3) engine replacement projects. That was the good news. Bad news is they are very busy and couldn't even give me an estimate on the timeline except for "months". I mentioned maybe scheduling something for our trip north next April and he liked that idea. Eric said he would try to get down to our boat over the next couple days to look at our engine room and take a few pictures. That would help with a timeline / cost estimate.
Oh.... more bad news.... I (stupidly) thought the engine replacement would be about $20K including installation. The engine alone was in the $20K range and installation would be $20K or more depending on how many systems needed to be replaced along with the engine like exhaust, water intake, shaft - propeller, etc. etc... It's gonna take me a while to get my head around that.
The last two days I've started the engine to let it run a bit. No tapping and it seems to be running very smooth. But the problems of the past week have once again reminded me that we are running a very old engine and need to be thinking about replacement or rebuild. I'll let you know how it goes.
On the arm front, it continues to improve a little each day. I'm able to do all my exercises and stretches including putting my arm to the side and over my head. It bums me out that I still can't hold up the flute for a whole song. But I'll try not to push it and let things heal so I don't make it worse. Soon!
We've paid for a week here and plans are to leave on Saturday or Sunday to continue our trip south. The weather looks much nicer for travel (warm and sunny) so I'm looking forward to getting back on the water.
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