Warning-Holiday festivities can be dangerous to your health.

Warning-Holiday festivities can be dangerous to your health.
How true this has been sitting here at the dock enjoying the week long party Indiantown puts on for the entire Marina.

 Monday we partied with a Steel band and enjoyed Island food and drinks.


Tuesday we had wonderful Italian cuisine  from a restaurant in town which was awesome and then karaoke was the entertainment of the night. I even went up and picked a song I thought would be easy for me "Wipe Out" however I did not know there was a rap remake of the song....................funny funny.




Wednesday we joined in on the dinghy race- poker run then off to Stomp some grapes,taste some wonderful wines, listen to Dr Dave's Southern rock band and then way to much drinking and dancing to end the night.


Click  here to see video.
Stomping grapes

Thursday was a fantastic Thanksgiving dinner with all the fixings and a pie contest.
By the end of the night we were totally exhausted and really needed to go to bed early.

 We wanted to give our thanks to Scott and Rochelle the owners of the marina and all his staff for all the hard work they did to make all of us feel at home during these holidays when most people are with their families. They really made us feel like part of theirs.

Running Westerbeke by jon

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone, I’ll let Arline tell you all about the parties and good times, but here’s the latest on the motor.




Well the injectors were ready on Monday and after a few errands we got back to the boat by 3:00. I finished installing them and a few other last minute items on the engine and wanted to try and get it to run just for a moment. We were scheduled to go into the water on Tuesday and then there was another schedule conflict. It was the beginning of parties here at Indiantown. Tonight the Steel Drum Band was starting at 5:00 and we missed that last year. So for half an hour I primed the system with the fuel boss, and tried to get it to run. I could only get it to run if I put fuel into it from above and then only till the fuel was gone. And the Steel Drum Band was warming up, so I’d have to wait till tomorrow.



1st thing at it had the same results and just couldn’t get it running. Now I’m getting nervous and it was our turn to be put into the water. We pulled Kasidah around the corner to her dock space and I jumped back at it. I thought I should check from the start so as not to miss anything. So I removed the fuel line from the engine at the injector pump and placed a coffee can under it to catch the fuel. I turned the pump on there was my problem,….WATER, no fuel just frigging water. Checking the fuel separator confirmed it was full of water. I pulled about a gallon of water out before good fuel started to flow, I cleaned the separator and fuel filter blew the lines out, then I only needed to get the water out of the injector pump. Now I’m sure the motor was running when we put her away in the spring so I was worried about the pump having water in it all summer. That would have been real bad! So on a recommendation from the guy who rebuilt the injectors, I sprayed WD-40 in the pump where fuel should have been and all the water came blowing out. (Did you know the WD in WD-40 stands for Water Displacement). A little more priming and bleeding and in 2 minutes it was running. It runs cool and never idled as nice.

Westerbeke Again by jon

Well most of you know that we over heated the engine last year on our way over to the Berry Islands. We were Lucky enough to have landed on an Island that had Great people, charter flights from the states to get parts and generally a great place to hold up. We had rebuilt the engine and moved on last year but near the end of the season we were having another problem with the engine. Air was getting into the cooling system, causing an  air bubble that would make the engine over heat again. At the end of last season I had not felt I found anything and woke many times though the summer at Fair Point Marina in a cold sweat thinking and worried about it.  Then at the end of the summer I had a head gasket blow on the travel lift in the yard. Now I had just replaced that head gasket last year and thought it was stange,....UNTIL I realized I had not re-torqued that gasket!! Could the same stand true for my Westerbeke? Looking at the manual it says re-torque after 50 hours,.....I didn't do that. The engine ran fine last year for about 75 hours after the rebuild and then the second problem started to show up. It was starting to make sense.

Once at the boat after cleaning it up enough to sleep on it, and cleaning the outside, we put away all stores we brought with us and fired up the batteries, Yeah 12.6 volts, fired up the refer unit, Yeah cold beer. Then I headed straight for the engine, I re-torqued the head and started to adjust the valves, but noticed a lack of compression on # 2 and #3 cylinders. Well the head had to come out of the boat again. As I was taking parts off I noticed the exhaust manifold had unburnt fuel in it, a sure sign of incomplete combustion. As the head came off I was hoping to find a huge hole in the gasket but didn't see it. Eric, the service manager at Indiantown Marina, had a look at the head gasket and right away pointed to TWO spots where there was blow by from the cylinder to the water jacket, #2 and  #3. YEAH YEAH YEAH. There were also other signs in the water jacket of anti-freeze being burnt from compression blow-by. Now was the head warped or the block?

The head went to a speciality shop "Blockheads" The report came back great, he too saw 2 spot with blow by, and machined only .008 of and inch off to make it straight. All thinking is that if the head wasn't warped the block would be fine, as the block has a lot more mass to it and a lot more water around it for cooling. The good news to date is that the head job only cost $160.00. I also took the advice from the great guys at Blockheads and sent the fuel injectors to be checked. Another Great  small speciality shop looked at them and confirmed "Wow these babies got hot". He showed me how they should work and what mine didn't do. How much to rebuilt them please? $27.00 each plus a 10 dollar part, they'll be ready on Monday. So the bad news is the gaskets and parts were $650.00 with the head gasket alone being $225.00 Ouch.

Well the head is back on and all painted up now we are just waiting on the injectors to come back Monday and we go in the water on Tuesday. We then can really test the engine under a load and get our confidence back in it. Hey if she gets 50 hours on her you want to bet I'd re-torque the head!!

We had visiters here already, Tom Gardener and Terri from Fair Point Marina (Ponytail Tom for all you, theres too many Toms here, people) came on Sunday last week and spent the afternoon here walking around and looking at all the boats here. They also took us out to dinner, then drove home. They are on the west coast of Florida during the winter so it was a 3 hour drive each way for them. It was great to see them and show them around here and Kasidah. They hadn't seen her since we left NY in '09 and all the work we've done to her since we left.

Looks like we'll stay here at indain Town for Thanksgiving, there is 4 days of events, just as a tease there is a real Steel Drum Band playing Monday night and it just gets better from there. I don't think I'll take part in the dinghy ran, roamer has it the alligators win every time.

Thanks for looking.

Ready for the drive to Florida....

We have been visiting family first in Dover and then in Connecticut for the past two weeks and are now back in Dover.
Wednesday morning we will head out for the long drive down to Florida to start the cleaning and work on Kasidah before our crossing.
We have had a great time visiting but its time to hit the road.
We went to Connecticut last week knowing that we may not have electricity because of the storm, but what we found was way beyond just the lose of power. The place  looked like a war zone, there were trees down, power lines down at just about every house and street corner and still lots of snow on the ground when we arrived on Monday, by the time we left this week it started to look a lot better but they will be cleaning up for many months.



While we were there we got to see Kim (Jon's niece) play soccer at her school. 











We decided we would stop back in Dover for a night or two because Kasidah won't be in the work yard till Thursday afternoon and we won't be able to stay on her till then, and the last night we were in Connecticut I pulled my back and was in some major pain for the drive here so it was one more reason to stop.