Titusville forward

Eased into Titusville, well, blew into Titusville on a cool afternoon breeze, slipped into the slip (sorry), and settled in for some more Florida time. First item of business was to get the outboard repair guy and the ailing Tohatsu together. Our man, Justin showed up in good time, climbed on the boat, grabbed the starter rope, pulled, and the lil' bugger fired right up. He laughed, I felt a little dumb; certainly puzzled. Shut 'er down, tried a restart; again, and again, and again. I chuckled, and felt a little less dumb, certainly relieved. Bottom line: intermittent kill switch. As a preventative maintenance thing,we decided to update the carburetor. This engine is 8 years old, and sits a lot. Turned out there were some dry rotted gaskets. Also some mods to the needle valve  system on the idle side. So, we wandered around, did some boat maintenance stuff; as in washed the salt off, lubed the upper station throttle cables, etc. Question was asked about maintenance problems on an older boat like Scooter. Knock on wood, other than the holding tank issue, Scooter has been a very well behaved vessel. Problems do arise in any complex piece of  equipment. If you look at it this way: you have 20,000# of plastic wrapped machinery, akin to a small village; sewer plant, power and light producing plants, communication abilities, etc, moving thru an extremely hostile environment; the lack of problems is really an  amazing thing.

In the course of our wandering, we walked by one of the local LEO's. As we passed, he called out "has it been scrubbed". "Whoa". thinks I, "is this some kind of local ordinance?" Turns out he was referring to the shuttle launch planned for that evening. So, we scurried thru the shopping spree, and got back to the marina just in time for a snapshot of the event. Sorry, it was a quick snap with the phone. Man does some amazing things at times.

Speaking of which, our man Justin showed up at 1600 Friday afternoon, put the parts back on the Tohatsu, pulled it a bunch of times; it started and ran smoothly each time, so I figured it was good. I gotta tell you, its hard to go thru life as a slow learner. Next morning, off to the north. Windy, some sun, more clouds than sun perhaps, but still pleasant enough. Got to Daytona Beach and parked behind the Seabreeze bridge. Speaking of man doing amazing things,  I want to know how they get those cranes up there.

Out of Daytona, bound for St Augustine; windy and gray enough to run from the lower helm station. Overall, a good run, some scattered rain showers, but nothing that caused any problems. On arrival in the St Augustine mooring field, I rediscovered one of the issues with running from the lower station; you cannot see the mooring ball at all. Ah, well, after some wind induced veering , and guided by the picker-upper's corrective commentary, we got'er done in reasonable fashion. Once moored, I chose to take the dink in and pay up, etc. Remember it is reallly windy and rough. Mounted the lil'ol Tohatsu on the transom of the lil'ol rubber boat; slid in (literally) squeezed the bulb, choked it, pulled it twice, OK, maybe three times, and off we went, Bear in mind I am now going into  20 kts of wind whilst sitting on the rear tube of the lil boat; the bow is up, and rising ( stay tuned). Engine seems to be  running a bit fast, but I get to the dinghy dock in fairly good form, cut back to idle; "whoa" way too fast. Out of gear, now I'm going backwards; into gear, too fast. As long as you don't hit anything sharp, a rubber boat will bounce. Got in the slot between the finger piers, bounced around 'til I could grab something solid and get shut down. Fun!Took a moment and adjusted the idle speed.  Paid up and headed back to Scooter; With  the wind for the moment, so it was a pretty cool ride. Now, Scooter is a fairly flat bottomed boat, so there is a lot of swinging side to side while at anchor or on a mooring. Plus, the mooring moves as well; plus , well, when I went to idle the wind was so strong that, once again, I was going backwards; powered up, nothing happened... then. wham, in comes the power, up goes the bow; seriously! Finally figured how Scooter was going to move, and stayed centered until I got close enough to grab the swim platform and throw Ginny a line. was kinda like a three stooges moment. Apparently there may have to be some more fine tuning done.

At the moment, we are sitting in the mooring field, listening, and watching as 30-40 mph winds whip everybody around. Hopefully, the forecasts will  prove true and this will slow down by ten tonight. Plan is to head for Jacksonville tomorrow, Then  Brunswick, GA  on Thursday.

Stay safe, look for Spring; Catch you on the flip side.