Palm Beach - fixing your boat in exotic locations
Karen:
We woke up at a very civilized 7 am and were leaving Ft Pierce by 8. We had 45 miles to go today, which seemed quite doable. We got the sails up quickly as we felt we’d been a bit too conservative yesterday with our sailing, and had a nice beam reach with 10 knot winds, where we easily made 5-6 knots. It was a perfect sailing day. We were quite close to the shore 1-1.5 miles off, and just cruised along. Michael was content at the helm, so I spent most of the day with Flo with our feet over the edge, ‘riding the rollercoaster’ listening to music, chatting, and watching the world go by. Later in the afternoon, I thought I saw a log bobbing and the realized no! Sea Turtles! The massive leatherbacks, there were 2 of them and they were right beside the boat literally under our feet! We saw 2 more not quite as close.
We turned into the entry of Palm Beach around 7pm and looked for an anchorage - it was quite busy. We thought we found a sweet spot and were having a docking beer in the cockpit when a mega yacht appeared manoevering right of our bow! Turns out we were in their lane and needed to re-anchor somewhere else - darn. We found a nicer spot a little further down right in front of a ‘Warram’ from Canada.
We had planned to be in Palm Beach maybe 1 day to rest as we still had great weather to make it down the coast. The next day Michael wanted us to do an oil change - he had been thinking about that for weeks and since we had used the engine a lot, it was definitely time. So we worked together to get the old oil out and into a bucket, and refill the oil. It went really smoothly and we were both feeling awesome about that! So then Michael said ‘you know the other thing I’d love to change is the fuel filter’. So we started working on getting that off. We needed to also open the bleed screw that was going to help get the air out of the fuel line. It was getting later. We got into a big review of left loosy righty tighty and bang! the bleed screw head was sheered off. Our dreams of leaving the next day were evaporating before our eyes. We both felt gutted and frustrated. And it was probably 7 at night by this time. And it was a Saturday, nothing would be open tomorrow.
The next day, Michael wisely called his brother to discuss the problem. Tom is a very experienced mechanic and was able to help troubleshoot, discuss options and figure out the next steps. Try and drill it out? The access is so limited. Remove the whole unit and try and replace that? He’d need to cut off the fuel lines to do that. Hmm. Best to go for a swim and think about it.
Monday came around and Michael spent the morning on the phone trying to find a bleed screw replacement locally. No joy. So we all got in the dingy and went ashore with a folding bike that Michael could then ride to some mechanic shops and home depot to try and get the part we needed. We tied up to a dilapidated dock in what turned out to be a condemned park. Garbage cans overflowed. We had to get creative and climb around a fence to get to a place we could hang out for a while. The only part of the park that was well maintained is a boat launch and a tennis court. The kids and I walked by a group of homeless people hanging out on the corner, when a car pulled up with meals to handout to them. We sat on a shady bench by the tennis courts and did some drawing, while Michael saddled up and went out looking for engine parts. He came back a few hours later with a kit to drill out the screw and we headed back to the boat.
More calls to Tom, more deliberating. Michael was able to successfully drill out the existing end of the screw - a turning point! We had the right size replacement screw, and through discussion with Tom, learned out to bleed the engine with just a regular screw, not the special one with a hole in it. We turned the engine on and it roared to life - we were back in business!!
