Day 55 -the "jiggle test" worked?

     For me Day 55 began like most days in the engine room. Instead of the pre-trip check of fluid levels, etc., today began with the trouble shooting of the reluctant generator from yesterday's trip. You start with the obvious like fuel flow, air in fuel lines, wires (voltage, connections) and the initial list goes on...  Of course, everything checked out, except for the voltage supplied to the fuel solenoid. Diesel engines do not have spark plugs to ignite the gas/air mixture in the cylinders. In diesels, the fuel/air mixture ignite because it is compressed (and therefore heats up) so much. To stop a gasoline engine you just turn off the ignition to stop the "spark".  To turn off a diesel engine, you have to  turn off the fuel supply using a solenoid valve. The solenoid is essentially a magnet that pushes/pulls a cylinder attached, in this case, to the fuel supply valve. So, to my untrained eye everything seemed to work, but the engine would not start.

Here is a picture of the solenoid (black with silver and orange labels). The ribbed rubber boot at the right end is a dust cover for the piston that moves in/out to control the fuel supply.

... and now for the jiggle test.  Once upon a time, I had a car that had one of those unsolveable problems. On my next to last service visit, the Service Manager threw up his hands and said that "we did every possible test, even the jiggle test". Okay, so what is the jiggle test?  It turns out that when everything else fails, they just reach in and "jiggle" all of the wires, etc. as a (very) last resort. When I woke up this morning, I remembered that experience (?).  With the Admiral running the starter from the lower helm station, I began doing what amounts to the jiggle test, one of the things that I tried was manually pushing the solenoid valve, and of course, the generator started.  Wait a minute, that's not right...  The solenoid is supposed to stop the fuel flow to shut the engine off.  Well, we checked one of the main diesel engines, and the solenoid worked as I had expected???  The solenoid was not involved in the starting or running of the engine, and it only activated to turn off the engine. To make a long story finally end, the bottom line is that the solenoid on the generator has the opposite purpose. It has to activate to turn on the fuel flow and remain on until you turn it off to stop the fuel flow. It turns out that the solenoid was "stuck", and by manually turning it on, I had solved the problem at least temporarily. Obviously, it is time to order a new solenoid because this one is probably on its last legs.
     Whew! Problem (temporarily) solved, but even better we may have actually figured out the elusive problem before the solenoid actually fails. Well, by that time, it was time for lunch and a much deserved (my opinion) nap...  After my nap, we went to the pool for some swimming and whirlpool time.

We were there for about a half hour when the sky suddenly got dark and the winds suddenly increased, which indicated the approach of one of the daily afternoon thunderstorms.  We rushed back to Lucky Us, and of course, it did not rain. Go figure...

Tomorrow we are heading out (west) about 10 miles across Charlotte Bay and then a couple of miles south to Cabbage Key for lunch, and we will probably spend the night there...and the next day? Who knows. We will probably try anchoring out amongst the dozens of small islands in that area.