Nov 23 - the better half ?

With some playing around, I finally got the Merc 25 humming. Waiting for the tide to be high enough, it started up fine but then, consistent with its symptoms of the prior day, would stall as I increased the throttle whether under load or not. With the choke part-way out, it would run. Playing with the mixture at the dock, I got it running well. We -- Abby and I -- headed out and I did some high speed running, slowed down, whoops, didn't want to accelerate again. Making the mixture even richer, away we went and in this case, second time was golden. Up and down the waterway, up and down in speed, it ran like a top.

I'll do some more boating within paddling distance before I trust it completely, however. Back at the dock I raised the boat on the lift and then went to start the motor ... whrrrr. Oh rats, the starter wasn't engaging. Luckily this motor has a pull-start and it went with the first pull. Getting out my battery charger, I hooked that up, stopped the motor and re-started it -- sure enough, all the starting and re-starting over the last couple of days had drained the battery and it hadn't had enough running to charge up. That's not surprising; it's an old battery anyway. I put it on the big charger for a while and then switched to the BatteryMinder overnight. From here in the house I can see it flashing on the dock, so it's now in de-sulphate mode.

The other big news of the day was the Saxon dryer. With some rain in the area, actually with some rain overhead and falling on us, it didn't look like a good biking day so I decided to go over to Saxon and do that deed. It would have only taken 15 minutes had it not taken me a little fussing time pulling all the little lights etc. off the old board and moving them to the new board. I didn't want to break anything and did not. Fire it up ... works great ! It was $175 for the part, including shipping. Had I used a repair person, it would have probably cost me $500 what with paying MSRP for the part and a couple hours labor when you count two visits, diagnostics etc.

That was pretty much it for the day, nothing else of note. We had pompano for dinner, along with rice and acorn squash. The latter two were done on the grill, of course. The pompano was excellent !

Another day done ...

Onward !