Back to Jones, our home away from home

As hoped, we were able to take Aeolus away from the dock on Sunday. I did a furious boat clean up and by lunchtime we loaded some friends onto the boat and headed off to Jones on a warmish and sunnyish day.

This exact formula produces marvelous results every time: sail to Jones, dinghy to beach, play on beach, hike around Jones, return to beach, return to boat, sail home. Perfection every time.

It was not that warm by the thermometer, but with a small dose of sun on that south facing beach, it was very comfortable. The recent rains have reawakened all the smells and the grasses have all burst green again.

The motor ran and sounded fine and so my alignment must have passed the test. No funny vibrations or noises. I'm happy.

By the way, the reason Elliott has no pants is because the boys played in the water and we made them take off their wet pants before getting onto the boat. Never mind that the water is quite cold, the kids had a blast. 

She's running again!

Ha! Went back to Aeolus today and after connecting this, that, and everything else, I started her up for the first time in about a month. Filled her with oil, filled her with antifreeze, changed all her filters (fuel and oil), attached the new heat exchanger and whamo! she purred like a kitten.

I have never had trouble starting my Universal diesel after the lines have been cleared. I pull the stop switch and crank her a few seconds to prime the oil system. I loosen the bleed valve on the injection pump. I turn the key on and let the electric fuel pump do it's job until it builds up pressure and stops. With all this, she always starts as always, on the first crank.

Now I have a massive boat cleaning job to do, but I might be able to pull her out of her slip just to take a short jaunt tomorrow! Yippee.

Engine alignment and other reconnecting tasks

I haven't had a lot to report over the past few days as I was away for travel and the work of aligning the engine is tedious. I think I was spared the worst case scenarios associated with engine alignment because now that I am done, I would estimate it took about 6-9 hours of time and a lot less donated skin than I anticpated. Not too bad really.

My transmission flange and prop shaft flange were already within reasonable tolerances when I dropped the diesel back down onto the new mounts. I had eyeballed the new mounts to match the old ones, as you would, and got lucky. However, when you need to get two surfaces within .003", being close is not much reassurance.