Wednesday, October 15, 2014

The saga continues!

Oct 11th - Land's End, Shell Beach, Panama City, FL

Just another day in paradise!  :)

It was very quiet here most of the morning. Only three other boats anchored back here, none closer than 1/2 mile. The pontoon boat activity did not pick up until almost noon. We had expected the weekend boat traffic to be crazy, but it was starting off slow.

I did have some work to get to, though. I spent another 1.5 hours scraping barnacles off  the port running gear, then scrubbing the slime and growth off the entire bottom. Or, at least, most of it. I will let a diver finish it once we get back home. I also need to spend some more time on our fuel issue. While we have not had any more major problems, the suction reading on the port Racor fuel filter is still reading around 5-6", which would normally mean the filter is dirty. I usually change them when the reading reaches 7". But I get this reading with a brand new filter element. The starboard unit reads normal at around 2-3". Something is causing a restriction in the line, as best I can figure.

When I installed the day tank, I also installed new fuel hose between the tank and the Racor filters. I am beginning to suspect that that hose may not be the quality I thought. Perhaps the inner liner is collapsing,  resulting in constricting the flow. There is a short piece of hose that connects the port filter to the primary feed line from the day tank. I have enough of some older, but much higher quality, fuel hose and decide to replace it. So back to the process of draining the filter housing, then removing and draining the hose. I did get a small slug of water out of the hose. Apparently is was captured in spot where the hose sagged a bit. I would have thought the fuel flowing through the lines would have pulled it into the filter. But, each engine only uses about 1.5 gallon per hour, so there is not much flow. After draining the hose I blew through it, and then blew through the hose I was going to replace it with. It did seem as though the higher quality hose was a bit less restrictive, but that could have just been my wishful thinking. Anyway, long story short, I replaced the hose but it did not make any difference. Still reading high. I guess I will just have to wait until we get back home to really dig in to this. For now I will just monitor it on an hourly basis. I can always turn on the boost pump to push fuel through the filter, rather than have the engine fuel pump pulling it through.

The other fuel issue is that we definitely have water in the main tanks. I am having to drain the big GF-1 filter after every time I transfer fuel from one of the main tanks to the day tank. The fuel pickup on the main tanks is about 2" above the bottom. So the fact that I get water tells me that 2" is probably nothing but water. There is a bacteria that grows at the water/fuel interface. I believe it lives in the water, but feeds on the fuel. These bacteria eventually die, and fall to the bottom of the tank. They become this nasty brown sludge, with a gel consistency. This will gum up a filter in short order, as I already witnessed when I changed out the filter element in the GF-1 several days ago. This is a problem I will have to deal with at home. The tanks will need to be drained, then I have to open the big inspection plates on the side so I can suck out the water and crud and clean the bottoms. Then I need to figure out how water is getting in there in the first place!  Ahh, the joys of boat ownership!

Enough work, time for play. Paula and I took the dink into the dand & grass flats near the beach. We anchored in about 3' and hopped in. I had my snorkel gear and swam around enjoying the marine life there. Swarming with schools of bait fish, baby Redfish, Sunfish, mullet, and more. I found a large area of scallop shells and though I had hid the mother lode!  Alas, all of the shells were empty. I first thought someone had been here before me and harvested the scallops and tossed the shells back in. But I realized that all the shells were partially buried in the sand, in the exact orientation as they would be if the scallops were alive, It is as though they just died in place and the little fish had a feast. Oh well, I don't even know if it is scallop season right now. Probably not.

Back to the boat and spent a little while getting everything ready for our early departure tomorrow morning. Top off day tank, check engine oil and coolant levels, top off water in batteries, etc. Then it was time for sunset gazing and relaxing on the foredeck again.

Weather forecast is looking perfect for tomorrow, so I am considering an offshore run from here to Destin. It will save us a little over 20 miles, and three hours. Plus I would get to pull some fishing lines in blue water. Can you say Wahoo, Mahi Mahi, or perhaps even a shark. Yum-oh!  :)

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