It is with great pride and profound happiness that I report that Further has once again left the dock. Finally! Thanks to help from from a marina mate—who happens to be dealing with the same delays from the same rigging company that screwed my summer—I was able to get out onto Chesapeake Bay and actually, you know, sail. What a concept!
To recap: In the wake of the extensive work being done on Further since, well, the beginning of 2022, some fuel problems had me really wary about running the engine for even a not-too-long period—say, long enough to get out of Back Creek and into the bay. A couple of weeks ago, the electrician who was tackling the controller that enables the alternator to charge up the batteries ran into a problem: the fuel filter alarm was going off. And no surprises, either: when I looked at the primary fuel filter (the first one after the fuel tank) it was full of water and crap. But the alarm is wired to the secondary filter, the one actually ON the engine. So I cleaned both filters and then ran the engine for about 20 minutes, with varying amounts of throttle, and voila! No alarm. No pressure issues. Nothing. Yes, there’s still gunk in the primary filter but it was stable and not causing any problems.
So, after spending the morning hauling the much-lighter Stephan to the top of Further’s mast, where he pulled off the Bluetooth wind instrument and brought it down to the navigation station so it could be paired with the electronics since the aforementioned rigging company hadn’t done so prior to installing the instrument atop the mast and raising said mast, and then hauling Stephan back up to the top of the mast to reinstall said instrument, we went to Davis’ Pub for lunch (on me, as thanks for going up the mast) and then Stephan and I took Further out.
And as you can see, things worked. We headed out of Back Creek and pointed southeast, a bit upwind of a reach, and enjoyed the light but steady breeze. Upon reaching the channel, we turned Further around and headed back, this time a bit before the wind so it was a slower go but still fun.
And yes, as you can see, I’m missing a tooth. It’s an old (33 years ago) hockey injury that came back this summer. But I am in the process of getting it fixed so I’ll soon be as pretty as before.
No matter. Any time Further is cruising along under sail it’s a pretty sight. And there’s more to come.