First Sailing Trip – Day 4 – The Hippies

Morning came and we started putting the boat back together, readying it for travel. A 70+ year old boat came in to get gas and our Dinghy was in the way so we had to move it off the dock. Last night I wiped off a ton of diesel residue from the Engine thinking that I could maybe spot where it was coming from if the engine was clean. So this morning I opened up the hatches and took a look. Still clean. Started her up and let her run for a while then checked again. Ahah!, there seems to be wet diesel right in front of the engine around some fuel lines. I’ll have to figure out what all those lines go to later. Now I believe that the fumes are caused by leaking fuel burning off of the hot engine. It seems to leak right away but doesn’t start fuming until a while after we are underway, once the engine gets nice and warm and the fuel has spread around a bit.
We had also seen a wrecked sailboat out in the sound from the Pub and the locals told us that it was a 130 foot sailing boat. It turns out that it is the Robertson II, a very famous sailboat that is currently privately owned. Through some drunkenness combined with darkness, the skipper managed to run the boat aground on Canada Day weekend this year. The Coast Guard tried twice to lift it off the rocks but dropped it both times and caused further damage. The second mast is now missing and the owner is pleading to the public for financial help to rescue the historic boat before it is declared part of the reef. Sad story for history. On our way out this morning we motored nearby the wreck and snapped some photos.

Then we headed out past the anchored ship into the channel and south to Saltspring Island.
The wind was pretty strong and we were headed against it for most of the way. Lots of crashing down on the water and spray over the bow. It was kinda fun. For a while I read a book in the v-berth and it sort of felt like being rocked to sleep. Dev and I also spent some time checking out the engine and looking at the service manual for it. We determined that there seems to be a leak coming from the Injector pump. The major source seems to be a screw in the Injector pump that turned out to be a bleeding screw. You loosen it to bleed the fuel system and until you see fuel leaking out, then tighten it. Well it was loose. Unfortunately, the belts and moving parts prevented me from tightening the screw while the engine was running so we left it for later.
We arrived at Fulford Harbor on Saltspring Island and were greeted by the Marina owner who helped us into the slip. He explained how to get to the Marina village from the dock as well as where to find showers, bathrooms, etc. We plugged into power and headed to the office to pay. The owner’s wife greeted us in the office with even more information about the area, directions to a variety of restaurants and shops and a key for the bathrooms, etc for night time. We walked over to the Village and found all sorts of funky shops. Colm and I agreed that it seemed like hippies and later I found in the travel guide we had that it was a hippie colony. Tons of artists, etc around there.

Dinner was originally burgers which we did make, but we also made spaghetti using some sauce, garlic, onions and burger meat. Tons of food and it was all very good. After that we played Apples to Apples and Trivial Pursuit while trying to polish off a 3 liter box of Red Wine. It was a nice evening. Oh yeah, I tightened the screw on the engine so tomorrow I hope to end the diesel fume problem.