A working engine

'Sarf & West mate, Sarf & West'
Pete Bernfeld
Sat 11 Jan 2014 01:58
A red letter day. For the princely sum of RM2500 (about £500), I now have an engine that fires on all three cylinders all of the time and a metal 'A' frame I can attach a hoist to and lift out either engine. Not the sort of thing that I thought was an essential to carry around but doubtless will be useful at some stage in the future.

I also had all the batteries tested and they are OK, so that's a relief. Unfortunately something has gone wrong with the engine switchery in the cockpit so I'm having to start and stop the engine by hand. The plan is to investigate that on Monday when Jonathan comes to pick up the money.

The next step is to price a junk-yard starter motor and alternator for the other engine. Once I know how much that will set me back I might resurrect the port engine. If it works this won't necessarily give me twin-engine cruise capability because I need to replace a seal in the starboard sail drive. For that the boat will have to come out of the water and until I can afford to fix the leaking hulls there's no point. The plan might be to use the non-leaking saildrive to motor around and in the unlikely event I need to jiggle around to get into a tight spot I could use two engines. After 18 months of fooling around on one engine it would be strange to go back to two.

Literary news: Eliezer's Journey and Trembling Tim (the illustrated children's book) are both being proof-read as we speak and I have been assigned an illustrator for the cover of Eliezer. Things are looking up....or at least things are happening. I'm also doing a final edit of the latest Karno. The art-work executive is in Brazil at the moment so she hasn't had a chance to work on the cover. Oh well, just another missed self-imposed deadline.

--
For a list of my books currently available in both paperback and ebook format and for reviews and news, visit my author page on Amazon
http://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B008O89WFO