Diving

Two weeks ago a friend of ours invited me out on his new (to him) boat for some scuba diving. I promised myself to get out on the water more this year so I skipped a trail race I had signed up for and rented some tanks Saturday evening. The dive was fun. I sort of forget how much I enjoy it until I do it again. We had some dolphins following the boat for a few minutes on the way out and saw a big reef shark settled into a hole getting his teeth cleaned by some wrasse. After the second tank we fired up the motor for the trip back. It ran for about 10 seconds, then died. No amount of tinkering seemed to help so I volunteered to crawl down in the bilge with the motor and check fuel lines. It has a big old Cummings marine diesel motor and crawling around in the hot hold, covered in fuel and oil and stale water, with the boat rocking, I was soon more disgustingly filthy than I ever remember being. I was having a blast really. No joy on getting it started though. And to top it off, we burned up the starter cranking it to much. Luckily we had motored out to the site with another small boat and they volunteered to pull us back in. That next Monday and Tuesday I helped Mark pull the starter, suss out the fuel problem, and install the rebuilt starter. We had it ticking over nicely by Tuesday but I did mention how much his boat looks like the SS Minnow for you Gilligans Island fans?