We tried leaving this morning but it didn't work out. We had everything aboard, the power cord disconnected and stored and the engine running. Unfortunately the engine didn't stay running, it bogged down and quit and would not restart. I exhausted my knowledge of diesel engines and still couldn't get it going. Two calls to our friend that works on most of the boats here helped and by the afternoon it was running again but very rough and would kill after a few minutes. In the afternoon I didn't know what else to do so I just took a nap waiting for a call back. Cori woke me up with a suggestion that I call Al. Al is the mechanic that worked on the engine last spring when we were in Florida. After describing the symptoms he gave me a couple of things to check and he was spot on with the first idea. Air was getting into the system at the fuel filter. I had changed the nut that sealed it with a new one that had a new vacuum gauge on it, It either is not sealing properly or I messed up the gaskets when I changed it out. I replaced the gaskets and o-rings from another filter and put the old nut and gauge on. It started right up and ran smoothly. Now I need to check if it is the new parts or if it was the gaskets. It should be an easy test.
The bad news is that we have missed our weather window and just leaving one day latter will put us in much rougher conditions. Our weather forecaster gave us an option to leave on Friday but conditions would not be that much better and we would be right ahead of a cold front on Sunday. We have chosen to wait a week and head out after the front has gone by. We will see, the forecast can change a lot in a week.
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