Low key day

By that I mean I accomplished very little today.

This morning I did not wake until past 8, then I remembered that Ron was going to come over to help with the boat so I dressed and came down to face the day.  Before long Ken called to say I had someone at the front door, I do not hear the door bell in my office.  It was Ron and we tweaked the boat a bit.  He looked it over but it was unclear what the actual timing was to be.  Later he called to say it was about 10 degrees before top dead center.

Then it rained a bit and I managed to get much of the stuff I was using in the boat wet with the surprise rain.

For breakfast I made some whole wheat pancakes with a couple eggs, a banana and it was all good.

Then I watched some TV feeling very lazy.  Eventually I headed out to try to locate some gas cans as I wanted to top off the boat with good gas.  Safeway gas was not pumping right so along with many other people I left the station choosing to buy gas at the little station in Discovery Bay.

When I got home I discovered a real disaster, the new gas cans you now buy have a system for putting the fuel into the boat that is almost impossible to use.  One of the two cans I purchased had a pouring device that I could never make work at all, no amount of tweaking would allow any gas to pass, the other can had a device that let the gas pass but at a tiny amount that I had to hold the can with 5 gallons up in the air for nearly 10 minutes to dump 5 gallons.  What a huge screw up by the law makers who have mandated this complicated and unusual system on all portable gas cans.  I'll have to do something else as these systems are unusable.  $17 a piece and they are essentially worthless.  What will the do gooders come up with next?  I'm told that the only way around this is to find gas cans at yard sales and use their free flowing nozzles.  What I had wanted to purchase was the excellent 6 gallon cans with long flexible hoses at the top and a valve to turn on and off the flow of fuel.  I guess those cannot be purchased any longer.

After going through the ordeal of putting the 5 gallons of fuel in and a can of Heet, a substance that takes crud and water out of the gas in the tank I then set about to start the engine again and try to get the timing set for good.  The engine started easily and I was able to tweak the distributer back and forth until the timing light showed we were right on the market.  The engine seemed to purr at that point and I locked the distributer down so it could not move.

Now I'm getting anxious to take the boat back to the water and see if it behaves better.  I certainly hope so.

I really appreciate the help of Ron and Ken who both had suggestions that worked out well today.  I know it looks a bit silly to be in the drivers seat of the boat while its parked in the driveway and engine running away and water running down the driveway, water that keeps the engine cool.

Tomorrow I need to resume working, get these reports out and then hope and pray for new ones to come in.

Sending love to all,

Tim