CAPTURED IN WHALE BAY

Another perfect night.  I am getting spoilt with calm conditions and peaceful anchorages.  The only disturbance this morning was the cows on the hill making noise.  This place is good, we are captured here for another day as we can’t think of a better place to go.

With my new found fishing confidence I decided to take the dinghy, head over to the rocks and catch some more fish.  Only had the lure in the water for a couple of minutes and got hooked up on a rock.  No amount of pulling, jiggling and jerking would get the dam thing free.  Ended up losing the lure and returning empty handed.  Confidence a bit dented but will try again this evening.

With fishing postponed I set about getting the outboard running properly.  Before setting out from Auckland I had consulted YouTube, I was sure someone had the same problem.  Lucky a few people appear to have similar problems with the Suzuki DF2.5 engine.  Rough running and poor idle seems to be the norm.  Fortunately a fix is at hand.  There is a sealed mixture screw on the carburettor.  The seal cap needs to be drilled out and the adjustment screw can be found underneath.  A few twists of the screw had the motor running near perfect.  Apparently the screw is sealed to comply with federal (USA) emissions standards.  There is no mention of the mixture screw in the Suzuki owner’s manual, but luckily You Tube has an answer for most things.

With the outboard fixed I started rigging lifting slings for the dinghy.  A quick schoolboy calculation indicated the centre of gravity of the dinghy with motor attached and the required sling length to get everything balanced.  I fitted the slings and hey presto it worked.  I can now quickly hoist the dinghy alongside the rail and lash it there in a secure position.  It’s also easy to fit and remove the outboard in this position.  I am quite chuffed with the outcome.  I had a celebratory beer after.

The next little project was fitting a new anchor light, one that comes on automatically at dusk and turns off at dawn.  I have an anchor light at the mast head, this is a nice bright light but I would also like a light lower down clearly visible to any vessel approaching at night.  A bit of wiring and soldering later the light was working.  I can now leave the light out when I am at anchor and it switches on and off automatically.

I tried fishing again this evening, caught a snapper and threw him back.  Then the wind freshened and I kept getting blown away in the dinghy.  Decided to call it a day and returned to Truce for sundowners.

It’s been a good day with a few little jobs knocked off.  Tomorrow is a moving day.