repairs – Adventures on the Club

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They say that cruising is fixing your boat in exotic places, but we have been extremely lucky since cutting the dock lines. Of course it helped that we did a complete refit on the boat before we left, but so far it’s been easy to find parts for the few minor repairs we’ve had. Well, our luck officially ran out last month.

Over the summer we, unbeknownst to us, had some water in the gasoline that went into the water maker. We discovered it over the summer when the water maker engine was coughing, just like the engine on our dinghy outboard did when we had water in that gas last winter in Red Shanks. So we poured out the gas and proceeded to use the water maker without any issues. Until. . . .

We went to start it when we were anchored in Royal Island, Eleuthera and saw that gasoline was leaking out of the carburetor. After doing some inspecting, Jeff noticed that the bolts holding the carb in place were loose, so he carefully tightened them. Now, Jeff used to be an air frames mechanic in the Marines so he knows how far he should tighten bolts. So the only thing we can figure is that there was a quality control issue with the bolt, because it broke.

Continue reading “Our first experience trying to buy parts in the Bahamas.” →

Yes, it’s true. We finally had a window and we could hop outside, bypassing Georgia entirely. We had debated stopping at Cumberland Island but decided we wanted to get to Vero sooner rather than later. It wasn’t a long window so we weren’t going to be able to come inside further south than the St. Johns inlet (which leads to Jacksonville), but that was good enough for us.

The night before we left was going to be our coldest of the trip at 42 degrees. Since we planned to leave at dawn and anticipated a travel night with temperatures in the mid-50’s, we dug out our cold weather clothes for the first time in a year. We don’t use them much any more, but we sure are glad we have them! Continue reading “Shaking off the cobwebs.” →