Wednesday, October 26, 2005

It has been getting progressively cooler at nights and we only have a lowly little electric heater to keep us warm. It has been doing the job just fine, but only while we are hooked up to shore power. We need another heat source. We have a diesel heater on board, which apparently are skookum, when they work, but we have not been able to get this beast to light.

It has a separate 5 gallon tank and somewhere between the tank and the furnace/heater there seems to be a leak. The furnace is mounted on a surface which is above the cabin floor and there is an opening which is about 7 inches high and 15 inches wide below it. When lying on the floor peering in the hole you can see diesel dripping down the side of the boat, you can reach the connections through holes on each side but you can’t see anything, so I thought I would try to see what I could see, kind of like the bear going over the mountain.

I got my head in the hole and then figured out I couldn’t get my shoulders through the hole, but by twisting about I could get one arm in and worm my way a little further in my quest to see what was going on with the tank and it’s connections. Well as soon as my massive chest got close to the opening, I could squirm no further, and I could not see what was leaking. All of a sudden I heard this exclamation from Barry, he had taken a picture and I started laughing, my chest started heaving and my ribs were compressed even more.

We used Barry’s nifty new pump to suck out the entire tank and there have been no more little pools of diesel under the heater/furnace, thank goodness, although the stupid, useless thing still doesn’t work. I cleaned it out the other day and Barry has ordered a new fuel filter, but even if we do get it to light, what are we going to do about the leaky tank. YIKES!!