Lord of the Flies

I've been asked if I feel like I have escaped the ravages of Winter yet. Some signs that I may already have: I wore shorts, shirt and tevas while doing laundry at the marina. There were dandilion flowers in the lawn. My boat suffered an infestation of flies yesterday until I opened the hatches and shoed them away. And I had to close the hatches last night because I started getting bitten by mosquitoes.

I had a delightful motor-sail up the river yesterday with the jib up. According to the gps, the jib added about a mile an hour to my speed. I throttled back the engine, and would have liked to have put up the main and turned off the engine, but I think the engine provides a lot of my steering now that I have only one working rudder. I did have some engine problems at the beginning of the day. It wouldn't start. I took the cowl off, and while cranking the engine, I noticed fuel dripping from the plastic fuel bowl. I disassembled it and found that the gasket was hard and cracked. I searched around the boat for something out of which I could fashion a replacement. I found a gasket kit for the Raritan toilet. It included a gasket with the same outer diameter as the fuel bowl gasket. So now my fuel bowl has a toilet bowl gasket.

I disassembled and cleaned the carb for good measure. What the heck, at this point I could do that with my eyes closed. I also thought the carb could had gotten clogged again and caused excess pressure to build up in the fuel bowl. Reassembled, the engine started right up. I think the ignition wiring may also have been wet. We had steady rain yesterday and some dense fog. Having the cowl off in the sun and wind may have dried it out.

I saw a dolphin tracking the boat about 30 yards off the port bow yesterday. I was pretty surprised, seeing how far I was from the ocean. No alligators though. I don't think I mentioned that I'm pretty damn sure that I saw an eagle while I was passsing through the Coinjock strait. That's pretty cool. I don't think I've ever seen an eagle in the wild before. Also spent the afternoon watching fighter jet excercises over the Alligator River Wildlife Refuge. Every twenty minutes or so, a pair of jets would pass low over the boat and execute some twists and turns over the refuge and then fly back by over the river. Quite a racket as they passed over. I hope they weren't practicing bombing runs on my boat as part of their excercises.