Oh wait, I completely got ahead of myself! Ok ok, yes, it was a fun filled night of fireworks and things. But I forgot to mention that my battery bank is nicely replenished, thank you Mr. Solar Panel. I'm sure it's a little unhappy still, and I still plan on doubling the bank at some point. Even more importantly though, between grilling up some burgers and cleaning the boat up a little, our Yard guru happened by and asked when we wanted to turn this thing into a sailboat instead of a land yacht. I used the ever-popular line of "Whenever you're ready.". I don't know if with all the commotion trying to sort out flood waters, perhaps he forgot that I had previously asked, or maybe he didn't realize I was actually ready when I asked? But either way, he said ok, first thing in the morning Sunday. Music to my ears, really. Especially as I had been seriously considering just having them convert my rate to Summer Storage instead of slip rental, which has a marginal difference, but really, I was losing hope for the season.
I woke up way too early this morning, Sunday. They keep 9-6 hours (roughly) at the marina as far as work goes, and here I am, beating my alarm by only a little bit - Six Freaking Thirty. I pulled the hatch open, and was greeted with overcast skies, and fifteen knots of wind. It wasn't long before he came by to chat, and let me know that the gusts were going to mean that the mast couldn't be stepped, and wanted to ask if I'd rather wait and do it all at once, or go ahead and put the boat in the water and step it later. An hour later...
You can see what direction I went with. I wanted to get the boat in the water and at least feel accomplished, even if it meant the mast wasn't up yet. Plus, it means not trudging through mud or around hillsides to get to the boat any more if there was more work to be done on it.
So that was step one. Now, all I had to do was start the motor, and pop out into my slip. How hard could that be? As it turns out, when you have a Mercury outboard that doesn't like sitting for more than a week or two before deciding it doesn't want to start, pretty hard. I was hoping maybe, just maybe, a miracle would present itself in the form of a first-pull start. That's a nope. Luckily, they weren't scheduled to use the lift again right away, so they left me there to tinker for a bit, and let me know that when I was ready, let them know. When I came up and ran it a few weeks ago I put brand new spark plugs in. We ran it for about ten, fifteen minutes in a barrel to get it warmed up. But then it sat for three weeks. Four? Something. But this motor has always been picky when it sits. I pulled the plugs, they looked clean, so I re-gapped them again, put them back. More pulls, more nothing. This particular motor is a mid-80s model, and has an on/off switch on the left, as well as a tiller-handle mounted momentary push-button kill switch. I've never used the handle button, but I did notice there wasn't really a lot of travel, so on a hunch, I unplugged the wiring to the kill switch. A few pulls later and voila! It. Is. Aliiiiiive! I put the wires back together, sputtered out. Unhooked, started. Could this be what the issue has been all along? I do always end up flipping the on/off switch when it doesn't start, and that switch and the button are linked in the wiring, so perhaps there's something going on. We'll see as the season goes though, and maybe NEXT year is the year I buy a replacement? After a few minutes, we dropped the slings out from under the hull, and I motored slowly to the slip. Tied off easily enough, and that was that. We'll put the mast up another time, but at least we're halfway there.
The only tiny hiccup in my plan is actually at least three tiny hiccups. The end of my mast has become home to a nest of birdie babies. I'm not sure if mama bird will track them down, I would imagine she does. But what happens if they haven't flown the proverbial coop when it's mast raising time? I would hate for them to just get dumped out, so we might need to relocate them. Then again, if the next wasn't in the mast, they wouldn't need to be disrupted. Me? I blame the parents.
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