The weather predictions for today called for rain and thunderstorms for most of the day so we decided to stay at the dock for another day. As with many predictions, we had intermittent showers but nothing bad.
I spent some time in the engine room and managed to install the new fuel pump on the generator (picture at right). I still have to change the oil on another day. There is a black arm sticking out the right side of the pump. The arm is pushed up and down by a cam (lobe) on the crankshaft. The arm pushes a rubber diaphragm inside the pump in/out to pump the fuel. The thought (hope) is that the diaphragm was bad and caused the motor oil in the crankcase to leak into the fuel inside the pump. The generator was due for an oil change, but with the leaking fuel pump there was about 2 quarts of diesel fuel mixed in with the motor oil. This is sort of a "work in progress", but the temperatures have been in the 50 -65F range lately. Thus, if we end up anchoring out for a night, we would not need to run the generator for the air conditioning. So, I will wait for another "rain" day to change the oil and test the pump. The fact that I would spend an entire paragraph describing this job may tell you something about how exciting a day we were having.
The weather prediction for tomorrow is much better so we will probably head out in the morning with a destination of Havana, Illinois. At our normal cruising speed of 8.3 mph plus 2 mph of current, it will be a fairly short trip of 48.1 miles tomorrow.
RARE EVENT... I did not make a conscious decision to do this, but I spent the entire day on the boat at the dock. If you are anchoring out it is easy to spend a whole day on the boat, but in addition to being busy, staying on the boat is also a testament to the dreary weather all day.
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