Boat Life

Date: 05 Oct, 2005

Location: Spa Creek, Annapolis, MD

Current position: 38 58.335 N 076.29.523 W

Life on Rachel is good. We're really enjoying it, even though there always seems to be something to maintain, repair, install, etc. - never a dull moment - guess that's boat life.

Our anchorage, even though it is right in town, is surprisingly quiet except for the 2 resident swans. Have you ever heard swans squawk/honk/trumpet? For such beautiful birds they sure do make the ugliest noise. At times we think the resident swan proctologist must be in town paying them a little "visit".

We have spent a delightful week wandering around Annapolis. What a lovely and cruiser-friendly town. Free dinghy docks at the end of each road make exploring a breeze. Usually after work or at lunch time we go for a wander around the old neighborhoods, enjoying the tree lined streets and cobbled sidewalks. Well, we mainly enjoy the cobbles - sometimes, if we aren't paying attention we'll go flying. We figure losing our land legs and stumbling a lot is also part of boat life.

Julie's been making good use of our hiatus to touch up the varnish (well, Cetol, actually) on the exterior woodwork. Mark repaired a rotted layer of laminate in the boom gallows and is happy with the way it turned out. We're quite happy with the progress we're making - though relatively small, some of these tasks have been waiting for our attention for some time - boat life again.

Case in point: our dinghy's outboard has not been running well for most of the season. It starts fine, runs a few minutes, and quits. We've always been able to restart it and coax it along, but it's gradually gotten worse and the other day it finally "made a desperate plea for attention". In other words, it had become so unreliable that Mark had to tear down, clean, and reassemble the carburetor.

Turns out there's a little diaphragm in there that serves as a fuel pump. The seal around the edges of the diaphragm had a slight leak, allowing air into the fuel and leaking off vacuum, preventing the pump from pumping effectively. Being at anchor and trying our best to be good, conscientious, ingenious, and creative sailors, we dug through our supplies. No spare, no gasket cement. What to use? Hey! We've got this caulk here that we use to seal stuff on deck. Mark smears a thin coating on the damaged face of the gasket, reassembles the carburetor, and presto! The outboard is back to running reliably again. Oh, and the name of the caulk? "Boat Life", of course.

Mark & Julie
s/v Rachel