The Blue View Is Learning New Skills All The Time

First of all I would like to Wish a Happy New Year to everyone. I know it's been a long time since I wrote a post but I've been crazy busy.  Linda has been doing a great job keeping up with the blog and I don't want to bore you by duplicating, so here's my view since we returned to DevOcean on Nov 14th.  We were expecting to launch within a couple of weeks but, as you know from Linda's blog we had some issues with leaking windows, leaking water tanks, leaking dinghy, soggy interior, engine maintenance,  replacing anchor rollers, fridge (again) and more. So as usual cruising plans must be flexible, we finally  launched six weeks later.  We often get comments from our friends saying such things as "What a life just cruising and visiting, it must be so wonderful". It is, but we have to pay the Piper. Not only do we have to maintain our boat but, it has become even more work because as a cruiser DevOcean is being used constantly so you never stop repairing and fixing.

Now to the point of learning new skills.  As you know being in the ocean and cruising you have to be self reliant. Take my nemesis, the fridge.  This thing has been causing me headaches from day one, I thought I had her all fixed. Wrong!  We got back to DevOcean turned the power on and found our fridge running but not cooling.  After recharging it in Mexico it was working pretty good. What's the problem?  After some digging I found a leak and the freon was all gone, I fixed the leak and recharged her again.  It's now working great but there is a lot of frost and condensation on the piping.  What's wrong now! More research but the company has gone out of business, darn! I've read blogs, forums and read some more.  Maybe I have too much freon. I drain some and makes it a little better, drain a little more, success! This took the better part of the day, let's keep our fingers crossed.

We were so busy getting ready to launch that some things were left for later.  One of them was the outboard for the dinghy. We stopped at an anchorage, set the motor on the dinghy and she won't start.This doesn't sound like much but this is our car. Without the motor you have to paddle to shore and back and sometimes the wind, current and waves makes it near impossible to get there.  This little Mercury four stroke, 4 hp has been another of my issues since we bought her brand new, I'm not a mechanic but I do have a pretty good understanding on how engines work, so here goes nothing.  Check spark! OUCH numb fingers I know I have spark. Check Gas? Lots of gas but plug is dry.  Hum, Ok we have gas up to the carburetor. Darn as I said I'm no mechanic.  I talked to a few people and I'm told we should ad additive to our gas on small engine as it plugs and gunk's the carburetor.  Great, it's not running anyway, so what the worse thing that can happen?
I Carefully remove the carburetor and take it apart trying to remember every part screw and setting, then clean it all and readjust the float. Put it back together and I don't have any extra parts,that's a good sign. I Install the carburetor and the engine starts on the first pull running like a top.  Woohoo I looked like a dumb ass doing the happy dance in the dinghy and almost fall overboard. This only took the entire day again but as I said I learn something new all the time.

This is the cruising life and I love it. It challenges me all the time and keeps me young.

Blue View signing off.