Saturday, July 20, 2019

ABISHAG. . . . . LIsten To Her Roar! ! ! !

     Yes, Friday afternoon, Eric the Mechanic was able to get ABISHAG's engine to run and run at high speed. It was a very good thing  as it made clear that there was nothing wrong with the engine. Well, most of it any way. While it did run well at high speed, feathering it down to a lower normal running speed had the same effect as turning it off. It is more and more clear that the culprit in this whole nefarious affair be the fuel injection pump. It is not producing sufficient power and pressure to run the engine at any speed other than full-bore, wide open. And so, it means that the fuel-injector pump will be the focus for the coming few days for Eric.

      I went down to ABISHAG today even though it was brutally hot. There were several  small items that  needed to be finished off. Tied as she was to a dock, ABISHAG was an oven inside. She couldn't swing with the wind and point into it, so little air got inside and it was like a car left in a parking lot with the windows closed. But all of the little items got taken care of.

     I got a chance to check out the job done by the riggers. They replaced the  jib halyard,a fusion of wire and rope, with a new shackle. They replaced the furling line that wraps and unwraps the Genoa. They replaced the main halyard which is also a wire-rope fusion and replaced the shackles on it as well. The replaced the furling line for the main which furls into a tube behind the mast. Both of these procedures required a trip to the top of the mast to replace and lubricate the sheaves over which the halyards run. They also replaced the mainsail out haul, a line that draws the mainsail out along the mast. They also lubricated all of the block involved with the sail handling system. And since I couldn't bring ABISHAG to them, they had to come to her and that added just a little bit more to the cost. And the cost? $1,465.87! AH, the joy of boat ownership.