Pender Harbour

We have the anchor up and are heading out of Gerrans Bay at 8:00 AM. The port engine lasted 20 minutes before it died. We still hadn’t exited Pender Harbour. We moved into the middle of the bay and we turned off the starboard engine while Fred bled lines, etc. on the port engine. Suffice it to say the port engine died two more times. We finally called “uncle” and I looked up which marina here had mechanics. I called Madeira Marina and they had an end slip that Fred was easily able to get to with one engine. The Harbour Master, Ian, was most helpful and made some calls for us to mechanics before we were even able to get up to the office and sign in. We took the cell phone with us for return calls from any mechanics and headed back up to the Java Dock. Would you believe that the mechanic who returned the call was Hugh, whom we met yesterday? We finished our coffee and headed back to the boat. Hugh and Kandy showed up almost immediately. Fred, Hugh (all 6’5” of him) and Kandy were in the engine room. It was cute the way Kandy looked after Hugh, even though he didn’t really need it. Hugh was convinced that the fuel lift pump needed to be replaced. Fred had a spare aboard. I laugh at the spare parts we carry but thank goodness for them. After Fred replaced the port side fuel lift pump the port engine started right up and ran for 20 minutes. Hmmm… Could our problem be fixed? Hugh came by to pick up the old lift pump and took back to his shop to rebuild it. Fred was so mentally exhausted he took a nap and I baked a loaf of bread and chocolate-chip cookies. My poor captain deserved it. We took a walk in the late afternoon to let Merlin enjoy terra firma as much as possible. The marina is pretty small and quiet so we had Merlin off the leash for awhile. It is so cute to see him running flat out with his ears flapping behind his head. As we were heading back to the boat we passed a sailboat, Raven. Suddenly there is this medium sized black dog that comes jumping off the boat and on to the dock to play with Merlin. It was really cute to see, even if the dogs were more interested in running and playing than in answering our calls. The owners of this sweet black dog came out to collect him. He is a lab mix named Promethius. Is that a great name or what?