Row, Row, Row Your Boat

cruise ship docked in St. George, Grenada

About a week and a half ago, Gil noticed some steam coming from the (dinghy) outboard’s exhaust. It’s not supposed to do that. There should be a stream of cooling water exiting it.  At low speeds,  there was no steam, but the stream of water was a trickle of what it should be and too hot to touch. Something was amiss. It was likely we’d need to have it serviced (again); which means doing without it for a while …. hence today’s blog title J

We didn’t want to pass up on the Mt. Qua Qua to Concord Falls hike (older blog), so we elected to ‘baby’ the outboard – go slow – until after the hike. Then, we’d deal with the issue.

We had introduced ourselves to another Canadian boat anchored beside us, and shared happy hour with Patrick & Paul aboard Foxfire.  Patrick, in his previous life, had a business working with motors. Lucky for us. He was very knowledgeable, and helped Gil troubleshoot the outboard. Though they were able to rule out several possible causes, the end result was  …. it had to go in for servicing.

Moon rising above FoxFire

Gil called Palm Tree Marine, who had serviced it almost two months ago. They were short staffed due to illness, but accepted our outboard, and would try to get it back to us in a day or two. Perfect. On day two, they gave us a call. They were stumped.

To make a long enough story short, we finally got the outboard back on day five. The issue was a result of Palm Tree’s prior servicing! When they replaced the trim tab screw, they put in one that was much too long and it punctured a tube, preventing proper water flow. They did accept ownership of the issue, and charged us only for replacement spark plugs.

After five days without the dinghy’s outboard, we were very happy to have it back, and running  properly again.

It’s hard to be without the family car.