Mean Time to Failure

Sometimes one has to know that there is such a thing as lucky guessing.  We decided to leave this wonderful marina and head to Apalachicola today.   This marina, with delivered morning paper, free coffee, a grill and bicycles for use by transients, is the standard by which we will judge other marinas.  Certainly, it is the finest we have encountered thus far.  They are not doing a transient a favor; they welcome them with unbelievable enthusiasm.  Enough for the commercial, as I said, we planned to jump back in the last of the intracoastal water way for the trip south.  That destination is the one from which we will do a 180 nautical mile passage to Tarpon Springs, Florida.  The off shore punch will bypass the Big Bend of Florida’s West coast.  So much for planning in this case since my pre flight check list revealed a small problem.  I recall seeing some soot like stains on the engine compartment vent cowl on the transom yesterday.  The engine uses sea water to pass through a heat exchanger (the other side has antifreeze to circulate through the block) then it injects the water into the exhaust hose.  The part is called the mixing elbow.  So you get hot engine exhaust mixing with sea water in that little part.  Said part is a weak point and ours failed in the recent past, most likely in the final hour of our approach to this place.   The good news is that before leaving Texas, I canvassed the Beneteau  boys and girls and asked what the mean time to failure is for that part.  The consensus was around 1300 engine hours.   We purchased one as a spare at roughly the going price of gold.  Bear questioned the decision three months ago.  “Why do you think we need that part?” Guess what?  Failure occurred at 1354 engine hours. 

The original part has been in service for 12 years and I guessed right on this one.  Since the lead time was twenty days on the spare from the Houston distributor, one can only guess how much time it would have taken to get it here.  So, I started in on the repair.  There are four hose clamps and a compression ring to seal the part to the manifold.  That should be only a half hour to accomplish.  Right!  Slight problem is that one needs to be about two feet tall with two feet arms, tiny hands and a willingness to bleed profusely in order to get that done.  It does not help that the boat troll was running amuck hiding stuff like tools after I put them down.  It also does not help that the yuckypuck I used to seal the deal wound up all over me, my tee shirt and the boat.  Very little of the YP made it to the part.  A trip to the nearby auto supply house for a deep eleven millimeter socket was in order.  Thank goodness there is such a place only two blocks away.  The repair took two and one half hours which put us a bit tight on time to make Apalachicola today.  We opted to spend another night here and suffer through another day at this place.  Dang!

Yesterday was a milestone day for the crew of Why Knot.  It was the first time that I walked to the nearby store for supplies, backpack and all.  At the store, I caught myself making decisions as to what to purchase based on weight.  That is right, weight.  For instance: one does not necessarily want to buy a watermelon if one has to carry it a great distance.  Chips, dips, apples (but not many) and such are preferred to a case of soda or a ten pound roast.  One experienced cruiser casually mentioned that booze is heavy.  No joke.