Well….owning and cruising aboard a big 38 year old boat don’t always go as planned; today was one of those days. We rose to a windy and rainy morning. After relaxing for several hours and watching the weather maps we decided at about 9:30am that it looked at the maps and forecast and decided that we would move onto the Hudson River and head toward Kingston with a possible stop in Troy across the river to carouse what was said to be a good farmers market.
Pre shove off checklist completed and port engine running we were that close to departure…uh oh, starboard engine would not start. It wouldn’t even turn over. An advantage to having twin engines can be redundancy. If one fails we normally can at least limp along on one for a bit. In todays case the redundancy of the twin engines turned out to be that Erik would manage to mess up the other engine while in the process of pilfering parts from the port to test components on the starboard by process of elimination.
Battery switched out ✔️ ballast resistor switched out ✔️ coil switched out ✔️ solenoid switched out ✔️ unfortunately none of these tests made the starboard engine run. Double uh oh….in the process of changing components back Erik managed to cross two of the multiple wires to the coil and ballast resistor causing a short which now had the port engine also inoperable 😖. While Renee rode to the hardware and auto parts store to get some 20A fuses Erik stayed back and continued getting things back together correctly. We were now down to believing it was likely the starter that was bad on the starboard and now no idea what we had done to the port 🤪. With a sore back from bending over engines all morning and into the early afternoon Erik conceded that we need the help of a REAL mechanic, A fellow boater who was heading out, up the Hudson, recommended Lock 1 Marine in town saying that their mechanic (Steve) was very good. A call to Lock 1 and speaking with co owner, Larry, had Steve headed down our way to the wall. He was very nice and obviously knowledgeable. After an hour or so of diagnostics he confirmed that the starter (likely original…38 years of starts isn’t too bad!) was shot. With another hour or so of testing and diagnostics it was determined that the igniter on the electronic ignition of the port engine was bad; likely toasted by Erik’s accidental wire cross and short. After removing the bad starter Steve left us stating he would need to get the starter into the shop to see if it is rebuildable on Monday or whether we will be able to get a replacement new one. He was very uncertain where/when he would be able to procure the igniter needed for the old school Mallory distributor system 🤔.
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| We know it was a challenging day when our photo roll consists 99% of engine and component pics 🤓 |
We paused, had dinner, and then loaded up our dirty clothes and towels to bring up to the nearby laundromat. While walking through town with Riva waiting for the washers to finish we did get a message from Steve stating that he found the needed igniter for the ignition online and that it should be here on Tuesday….maybe. 🤞. So, here we are in Waterford for what will likely be at least 3 days, maybe more. Bottom line is that there could be worse places to be “stuck”! There are many things we can see and do here still and friendly people have been welcoming. We will definitely make the best of things and figure/revise the plan as we go through the next few days.
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| Lots to see and do in this beautiful area |
“Plans are nothing; Planning is everything”…Dwight D Eisenhower
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