We left Racine at 12:15 pm for a short 11.8 mile trip to Kenosha, Wisconsin. The big event of the morning was to ride the bikes about 0.7 miles across the bridge to another marina on the other side of the river. That marina was a Yanmar Marine Diesel repair shop, and I had called last week to see if they had a fuel pump for the Yanmar diesel engine on our generator. We have diesel fuel leaking into the crankcase on the engine, and the mechanical fuel lift pump is the first place to look for a leak. The pump is driven by an arm that pushes a rubber diaphragm to pump the fuel. If the diaphragm cracks, tears, etc., then diesel fuel will flow directly into the oil reservoir (pan). I took the old pump off, and when I blow into the fuel inlet, air comes out through the diaphragm. That is not a 100% guarantee that the diaphragm is bad since air (gas) is more "slippery" than (liquid) diesel fuel. They had a fuel pump with the right part number, but it was the wrong pump (?). So, I still do not have a new pump, but the parts manager was most helpful so I am almost positive that I can now order the correct pump.
When we got back to Lucky Us, it was 11:30 am and time for lunch. There was a very nice waterside restaurant at the marina office so we headed over for a leisurely lunch. I specifically said "leisurely" because we had been watching two lines of storms on the weather radar, and it looked like the first line would pass about 1:30 pm. Once we had ordered lunch, we looked at the radar again, and it was clear that the first line had missed Racine, and it was time to leave quickly before the second line arrived. We normally would not even consider leaving port between two lines of storms, but our travel time was only 1.5 hours so we had plenty of time.
Once we had seen that the first line had missed us, I raced (would you believe walked quickly?) back to the boat to get ready to depart while the Admiral arranged for the order to be a take out. Kind of a hasty departure, but I had already done the engine check while the Admiral had set up the flybridge. The wind did pick up to about 15 mph for about 30 minutes, and it did rain for about 15 minutes during the trip. However, we stayed between the two fronts for the whole trip of about 1.5 hours. The picture at the right shows Lucky Us safely docked with glassy water after the second line of storms had passed.
About 4:00 pm, we walked into town and looked around for a while before picking a restaurant for dinner. One of the neat things about Kenosha is that it has a new trolley system that has retro-style trolleys that run down the middle of a very wide boulevard. Most of the cars are brightly colored and make a pretty sight. There were signs and bumper stickers saying "Expand the Trolley" so it must be popular with the locals (?).
For dinner we chose an Italian restaurant and ended up sharing a pizza for dinner. The veggie pizza was wonderful, but both of us ended up having "digestive" problems during the middle of the night so it might not have been such a good choice...
We arrived back at Lucky Us a little too late to go to the pool/hot tub, but we were treated to this lovely sunset view. The view is toward the northwest over part of the marina and the city.
Tomorrow we are looking forward to seeing some of the local sights and perhaps seeing a movie.
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