I got up with the sun (07:00) and after imbibing my morning coffee and checking the weather I started working on the diesel engine and turbocharger. I took the turbocharger connections off and felt that the vanes were sticky, so I used a wooden stick to turn the blades on the suction side until they were running freely. Using a lubricant here is quite dangerous, since when the turbo runs the temperatures are very high and many lubricants will combust and potentially blow up the turbocharger. I got the turbocharger put back together and started up the engine and could hear the whine of the turbo so I deemed this a success and prepared to depart the anchorage. I left before noon but after exiting the channel and coming up to speed I had the exact same issues with throttle setting above 2000RPM that I’d had the previous day, so the cause wasn’t the turbocharger not working. I started looking around for another marina to the south that I could reach before dark and came up empty, my deep draft was the problem for those marinas I could reach, either the entrance channel was too shallow or the docks themselves wouldn’t take my draft.
So I opted to turn around and motor back to Solomon’s Island and go to the docks there. I called the dock master on the radio and he said he was off that day but would come down to help me dock (and, of course, to run my credit card through the machine. I docked at the end of the fuel dock and tied up and started trying to figure what I could do with the engine issues. By now I was getting close to missing the weather window, but I still had a bit of leeway.
I needed to do the laundry but had run out of detergent, so I walked to the nearest 7-Eleven which looked quite close on the map but ended up being a 40 minute walk each way and that little bottle of Tide cost $7, but the weather was surprisingly warm and it was good to get off the boat.
