Fernandina

Left at 7:00 AM and headed out the inlet to sail to Fernandina on the Ocean. Once we get out the inlet we have a relaxing trip north to Fernandina. 50 miles straight north on autopilot. At the Marina we fuel up and stay over night on the face dock. My cousins, Jan and Bill, with his wife Deb come down to the dock to visit and then we all go to the Salty Pelican for dinner.

St. Augustine, Day 2

After breakfast we do a long walk to West Marine to replace our malfunctioning West Marine binoculars that we bought last year. They do not have them in stock and the clerk says he can not find a record on their computer system that we bought these binoculars at West Marine. Since the binoculars have West Marine printed on them with their own model number its kind of obvious where they came from. But guy this wants to be a jerk. We will wait and try another West Marine that has them in stock.

On the way back from our walk we stop at Cafe Alcazar for lunch. We have a very nice lunch as we listen to a musician playing guitar.


 

St. Augustine

Left early at 7:15 to go through a draw bridge before it stays closed for an hour for commuter traffic. 

 

Someone's home on the ICW, the boat is on the bottom

Had a fairly calm day into St. Augustine. Had dinner at Freida's, a Mexican restaurant. Another day without engine problems.

Manana, Bridge of Lions

Daytona

We leave by 8:45 AM. After an hour or so I notice we are having a small fuel leak onto some fuel absorbent pads that I placed in a couple areas around the engine. We pull off the ICW and drop anchor and I replace some hose clamps to deal with the leak. Heading up the ICW by the Ponce Inlet a Canadian sailboat in front of us takes the corner too wide and runs aground. We immediately turn around to give him space to free himself. I call him on the radio to tell him which direction to go for deeper water, but he backs into the shallower water. Now that he is stuck hard we sail through where the channel is. He calls Tow BoatUS. Being a nice Sunday the boat traffic is a zoo. 

 

Busy Sunday on the ICW

We make it to Daytona and anchor for the night. We ran all day without the engine stalling once or running rough. Problem solved finally.

Titsusville Municipal Marina, Day 2

The pumpout boat comes by at 9:00AM. Linda had signed up the day before for a holding tank pumpout. Once that is done I start work on pumping out our fuel tank. The fuel in the lower half of the tank is rather cloudy. I come to the conclusion that we have emulsified water mixed in our fuel, which causes the random shutdown of the engine. Since it quickly passes the engine is able to restart. After dumping all our fuel, I fill the tank back up with fresh fuel from the Marina. After I am finished I wash the boat and fill our water tanks.

Again we walk to Dixie Crossroads for dinner.

Titsusville Municipal Marina

In the morning we head into the Marina. $1.25 a foot, pretty good deal. We walk to NAPA to buy a fuel pump to pump out our fuel tank. We find that Titusville Municipal Marina takes old oil and diesel fuel for free. A company picks up the oil and uses it in asphalt. I thought we were going to have to haul the fuel to an engine repair business next door and pay them to dispose of it.

I find a truck diesel fuel pump with a high flow rate. I wired up the pump with a switch to pump out the fuel tank. Linda worked on cleaning the inside of the boat. For dinner we walk 1-1/2 miles to Dixie Crossroads a very popular local restaurant which we discovered on our previous trip.

Titusville RR Bridge

Port Canaveral Bridge

We get up at 4:45 have showers and leave the dock at 6:00AM for the bridge opening. Unfortunately the next Bridge, the Christa McAuliffe bridge, does not open because of commuter traffic so we have to anchor an hour to wait. 

 

Breakfast stop past the Lock

So we have our breakfast stop. After we pull up the anchor and head for the bridge our engine dies again. We are able to find a safe place to anchor. I tell Sea-Vu-Play to go ahead and not wait for us, nothing they can do. Worst case we call Tow BoatUS. I have a back up fuel pump, that I use for fuel transfer, so I install that pump and remove the old one. I know it was waning, but when I test it, it does not pump at all. Since our fuel tank is higher than the engine we can run the tank below half full without a functioning fuel pump. That could be the cause of our problems. Anyways, the engine starts right up and it looks like we have a fix. The Bridge operator was very nice and open up for us, obviously heard my radio conversations with Sea-Vu-Play about our engine problems. We are soon on the ICW heading north into 20 mph winds.

Just as we go through the Addison Point Draw Bridge the engine stops. SOB ! We quickly unfurl the jib and call the Bridge operator not to close the bridge because our engine died and the high winds are pushing us back into the bridge. He closes it anyways, asshole ! We can not sail off left or right, because there are power line poles and guide wires on the northside of the bridge blocking us from tacking in either direction. We look to be screwed. I decide to try restarting the engine since we are running out of options. The engine starts right up without any problems. What the hell ! We continue on our way without the engine skipping a beat. A couple hours later the engine is still running fine and we find a very protected anchorage just north of Titusville. I still can not find anything wrong with the fuel system or engine. I am getting good fuel flow. The only other thing I can think of is our fuel is contaminated. So I decide to go into the Titusville Marina and replace all our fuel the next day