To give you a ‘How is David doing’ update, I have made quite a bit of progress on boat projects. And have had some entertainment. I met a new boat here in the Marina, and they invited me over for a visit. They are here because they had an engine tragedy and so they are stuck here for a few weeks. I think their boat is like 20 years old. And I may have that all wrong it may only be 10 years old. I mean no offense.
The engine has worked flawlessly for all that time, and until very recently, when it would not start. It turned out that water had gotten into some of the cylinders and had rusted them shut.
For the non-boaters reading this, there is a thing called an anti-siphon valve, that most boats need to keep the water that comes in to cool the engine, from leaking into the engine when the engine is not running. It’s a complicated situation and most boaters don’t understand how it works. But it is a common cause of engine damage if not installed correctly.
As far as they can tell, these unfortunate sailors had a problem, not with that, but with water coming down the exhaust. Or being trapped in the exhaust when the engine was shut off. That is also not unknown. However, they are not certain as to the cause.
That would worry the heck out of me. Because I would not know if it was going to happen again at any time. There are very few things that you can be certain of on a boat. But, I like to be as certain as I can that the engine is safe.
Speaking of Dave, and safe engines, I went to run the engine recently and no oil pressure. I thought that perhaps the oil had drained back out of the oil pump and the pump just needed to be primed. But, it appears that the pump is not pumping at all. It’s driven by the camshaft, and the engine runs perfectly, so the camshaft is obviously still turning correctly. There is not much that can go wrong if the camshaft is turning. However, I have to pull the flywheel which is a very major job, in order to investigate why the oil pump is not working.
I discovered this just before some friends from Marmaris were going to stop by for a day or two. There is already more than enough chaos on the boat, even though I have made huge improvements in that. So I did not want to start that project until after they were gone. Because, it will certainly raise the chaos level a lot.
And I had more entertainment. They did stop by, which was quite flattering, because it took them some expense and about a day’s travel in each direction to get here. Marmaris is not all that far away but the shortest road is fairly slow because it is so widely and buses, because they are trying to serve the many small communities along that road, need to stop for a significant amount of time in each bus station at each community. This makes for a slow average speed. But my friends said that they would rather do that than rent a car.
I totally agree. Driving in a foreign country is not my favorite thing to do. So far, I was always able to talk Janet in the doing it the several times we rented a car, and then I would navigate. Because I actually am better at the GPS than Janet was.
Not to imply that she was not totally competent at it. She was very good with it. It is just that I enjoyed playing with it more than she did. Sort of like languages. She was clearly much better at languages than I. And so I have never gotten very competent at any of them, because I could rely on her.
And it has occurred to me that she may want to drive because she did not like the way I drive. <wink>
So, I had a really great time visiting for 2 days with my friends from Marmaris. Their cruising plans have changed, and they decided to sell their boat, and go do some land travel. Very soon they’re going to fly to Rome and find an economical apartment there. What fun that will be. They’ve they’ve wintered in Rome before on the boat. So they’re familiar with the area.
I haven’t been for a swim in many days, and I see it’s a good time to go do that. So I will go for a swim.
There are many freshwater springs along this part of the coast. And several of them, are right in the area where the swim platform for the Marina is. Being summer, the salt water temperature is warm enough even for me. Except for where these darn freshwater springs come up. I am swimming along just fine, having a wonderful time. I have my dive mask on and snorkel but no fins. And then all of a sudden the water gets very blurry looking and cold. Not ice cold by any means. But much colder than I enjoy swimming in. Being a spoiled wussy that I am. I never swim in the Pacific Northwest anymore, although I used to before I knew that water could be much more enjoyable.
My standard joke was, that in the Pacific Northwest, if one could get in and splash around for 5 minutes and get out of the water unassisted, they thought that had a good time.
I like water warm enough, that the only reason that you get out is because you get hungry. Like bathwater temperature.
We have met many Scandinavians that seemed to think that if water is liquid, it is warm. I have seen a photograph of one of our very attractive Scandinavian friends, in the process of climbing down the swim ladder, and pushing a ‘bergy bit’ out of the way, so that she can get into the water. A ‘bergy bit’ is a small ice berg. In this case, it was about the size of a small car.
One tough gal.
Hopefully the local swim area will be MUCH better than that, today.
Dave
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