On day two we left Toronto at the break of light, our destination Cobourg. We sailed in gloomy weather almost entirely on one tack into the night. It was a dark, moonless night with the occasional glimpse of some stars. By now the wind had died down but the waves remained rocking the boat. This being our first time sailing at night we decided to take down the sails and motor for the rest of the way. The weak wind also played a role in our decision as we wanted to get to Cobourg as soon as possible after an entire day of steering without an autopilot.
In the dead of night all of the smallest sounds are unpleasant. I wish I had an engine that I couldn't hear because each time it would turn over I would compare the sounds to the previous revolution looking for any anomalies. Having nothing to do but go crazy from the sounds with two more hours of motoring I opened the engine compartment to have a visual inspection. At this point I saw a problem. Diesel was dripping from the engine. I had radioed my friend to inform them of the situation and not to speed off into the distance too far in case our engine died. Nothing could be done at the moment so we were forced to continue as we were now with more anxiety then before until we reached our destination at 1am. The marina was full so we tied up on the inside walls of the marina. At which time an official from the cost guard stationed there appeared requesting some information. The diesel fumes were unpleasant but manageable during the night.
On Day three our destination was Presqu-ile Bay. In the morning before leaving i had climbed into the engine compartment to see where the Diesel was coming from. It turned out that the aluminum ring collar holding the secondary fuel filter, "on my boat the only fuel filter" had a crack running along the thread. Its not a spare part one has so a temporary repair was in order. I had some rescue tape on-board which I thought would be the perfect application. The only problem with the application was the limited space i had to work with for a proper application. It was not possible to apply the rescue tape as tightly as i would have liked. I wish the tape had heat shrinking properties at that point. We fired the engines and it worked, for a while. Because we were unable to get replacement parts anywhere during out trip this was an ongoing issue that had received daily improvements on the temporary fix just to maintain a slow drip rate. At the end of the trip i had a layer of foam mat rapped around, with a layer of 1mm cork mat on the outside rapped with rescue tape, clamped with flange clamps, lots of flange clamps, and solid copper wire twisted to tighten on the ends where i could not get a flange clamp. Rescue tape is great but once it gets diesel on it the material becomes slick and stops adhering to itself.
On day four we were sailing past CFB Trenton. They were performing ac-130 exercises of takeoff and landing. Each time flying over a different boat as if they were trying to individually target us. It made for some good photos and I found the experience better than any airshow I had gone to. We did a stop over at Belleville for the night and to see in vein if we could track down some parts. On day five we had a good sail down the channel system. towards Kingston. On our approach to Amherst Island the weather was quickly degrading and we kept hearing weather storm warning over the radio for our area. It was a west wind and the waves had grown to small monsters. We had our sails up passing Amherst Island with our engines backing us up. We had ground to a crawl going upwind at times manoeuvring in-between buoys in front of Kingston Airport. We made it to Portsmouth Harbour in the evening. The next day we made it to Gananoque where we hung out moored in-between the islands relaxing with our friends.
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