Ok, this is bizarre. The outboard is afraid of the bonnet. It seems to run well enough until you try to put the hard cover on it. Then it starts to die. Really. You put the bonnet on it and the rpm starts to go down until it stops running. Honda says its an exhaust leak down in the leg, five hours at $85 an hour away. We’ve pulled the plug. The new plan is to run the damn thing without the cover, water be damned. Not a pretty solution.
I have never seen such a wide variety of beautiful yachts collected in one small harbor. Maxis are a dime a dozen, they must have cornered the world market of carbon fiber. We were last here in January, but to see Newport from the boat is a totally different experience. The harbor was nuts to butts, as they say in the army, with all manner of craft. Mooring balls continue their encroachment into the shrinking anchoring area, at $45 a night. The Harbor Master said it’s the Ida Lewis anchorage or nothing. We shoehorned Escape Velocity into a spot next to a Catamaran that I hoped would move like EV. Don’t want any bumps in the night. Ordinarily I wouldn’t have even considered being this close to other boats but you gotta do what you gotta do.
BOOM! Cannons are fired from several yacht clubs to mark sunset (to signal when the captains may strike colors) and the opposite in the morning.
After a quiet night we are preparing to try to stop the minor leaks in the watermaker and to go ashore.
Nice place to hangout.
Run the outboard without the cover!! You never saw a British Seagull with a cover, did you? My Honda 5 hp outboard runs very reliably – the cover is all scarred up and it looks like trash – I like it that way, hoping that no one will steal it. A Honda outboard with no cover is even better – air and rain won’t hurt it. If it runs,, use it!!
Outboards need four things to run – fuel, air, spark and compression.
Could the cover be interfering with any one of these? Not any more sure than you are about the exhaust leak being the problem!!
Interesting observation about mooring balls – all the anchorages in the BVI are full of mooring balls – income for those who set them, and more boats per square foot of limited harbor space to provide more revenue for bars, restaurants and marine businesses – haven’t seen that in the Chesapeake
Bay yet.
The only reason we say exhaust leak is that’s what the Honda serviceman told us after he spent time on the phone with Honda describing the problem.
And yes, we will run it with the lid off. Until it dies.