THE smoke problem seems to be licked. Mike the Mechanic worked on our boat most of the day today to figure out what the problem was. In the end, it turns out that the cooling water impeller had shredded itself (probably when we picked up some debris on the intake, which caused excess suckage), and distributed pieces all through the cooling system, clogging the cooling system and causing more steam than normal. We weren’t seeing any overheating, but we would have done shortly. Now we know that on this engine, white smoke should mean check the impeller.

This didn’t fix the lack of power, but we now know what that is: the prop is overpitched. Basically, the prop is trying to push too much water aside, which doesn’t allow the engine to reach its max revs. The symptoms are identical to fouling the prop. We will leave it as it is for now, since we can get 6.5 knots, but when we haul, we’ll get it repitched–we should be able to reach hull speed (about 7.5 knots).

We will attempt to head south tomorrow.

THE gods are smiling on us, at least a bit.  Our lovely friend David treated us to dinner last night, which much improved our moods — though we were pretty sanguine about the whole thing to begin with. Mike the Master Mechanic is working on the engine now and says that it’s not going to be hard to fix.  It’s 60 and sunny and forecast to be so until Thursday.  Perhaps the best news of all is that Chris Parker the wunder-forecaster has now advised folks NOT to leave tomorrow or possibly Wednesday because of a big ‘ole low in the Caribbean, so we very well might just be able to join the rally.  We’ll see.  I’m not holding my breath, but trying to just maintain the strange zen that’s settled in.