Ah, well.  Nothing in life’s free as they say.  In this case, we had our diesel “full maintenance session” the other day.  Four hours of work, and the good news is that everything’s now up to date.  “Bill the diesel guy” with me (Bob) watching over his shoulder, did the full maintenance.  Changed the water cooling impeller (the old one was failing-one vane was ready to come off), adjusted the valves (whatever that does), new alternator belt, put on new oil and fuel filters, changed the oil and cleaned the Racor (primary fuel) filter which was very dirty.  Probably hadn’t been cleaned in several years.  So nice to get all up to date.  The bad news: a lot of stuff that needs to be done: new aft engine mounts, new air cooler, new oil cooler.  All have significant corrosion issues.  Couple of boat dollars’ worth.  Ah well, that’s boat ownership.  I used to think flying and maintaining my own airplane was time consuming and expensive.  Not even close!At least I learned some stuff:

• How to bleed the fuel line (although Yanmar has a very clever hand fuel pump that helps to fill the line when you change the filter)
• Where all the stuff that breaks is
• How to bleed the line  by loosening the injectors 

I also found out that probably the boat is “over propped”.  The engine power curve wants to power the boat at 2800 RPM.  However, with the prop we have on, the engine wants to run at more like 2100 RPM.  Too big a propeller means the engine is lugging.  Like driving around town at 30 MPH in 5th gear.  We’re going to have to do some testing while under way to find out for sure, but seems likely we’ll be looking at a new prop as well. Another boat dollar for sure. But, that’s what ownership is all about. Tweaking the boat to get it exactly where it (she) and we are enjoying ourselves to the max!