Camp Lejune, North Carolina anchorage
 
It was a good day.  An exciting day.  A longish day.  We popped out of our warm cocoon of a bed ready to get underway only to look out and find we were fogged in, so we lingered over coffee with hazelnut flavor cream.  It was nice.  Later in the day as we passed through Beaufort, North Carolina we knew we were truly on our way south when we picked up an escort of six dolphins the first we had seen since spring.  We were also found we were truly back in the ditches with narrow channels with edges that are unforgiving. 
 
It feels real good to be making 60 to 70 miles a day even though being back in the ditch means we can’t play gin while underway now.  Jeez, did I say that?  Fortunately the autopilot works wonderfully even in the ICW channels.
 
As we passed through the front part of Camp Lejune, large troop carrying helicopters kept doing touch and goes in the forest and always seem to come over the boat after each lift-off with much noise and excitement   It was a great deal of fun as we powered through the channel and our first bridge opening in several months.  We were feeling pretty smug about our progress as we entered our last mile before the anchorage.  Then the port engine stopped with about five seconds warning.  Hmmm.  Not good.
 
 No matter how you look at it running on a single engine on a two engine boat in a tightly packed anchorage creates just a little tension, not to mention the high expenditure of energy sorting through the several things that could have caused the engine to stop.  From dirty secondary fuel filters to an engine that has frozen up.  Please, oh please let it be the filters.
 
Well we finally got the  boat parked hanging on the hook and I dive with a great deal of apprehension into the engine room to change filters because that is the easiest and the only thing I know to do.  I changed the two filters hanging on the engine and since I had added a Walbro pump to push fuel thro the primary filter which feeds both engines, and then the two secondary filters on each engine.  After filling the filters with the Walbro fuel pump I asked Lynn to turn the engine over with the starter.  She did—it didn’t.  Hmm.  Now what.  I went to the injector pump and bled it also although I thought the pump would have pushed the air on through it.  Lynn than hit the starter again and Leela, bless her little injectors, started right up and purred with contentment or maybe that was me.  Hard to tell. 
 
Now it wasn’t a big thing really, sooner or later we knew one or both of the engines would stop while under way, but we sure felt real darn good about the ability to diagnosis logically and then do something about it successfully even if it is a simple filter change.  We be good at it this time.  There will be a time when we wouldn’t be so good at it.

Now we lie our heads on our soft pillows lulled to sleep by the marine helicopters that are training themselves and troops for no doubt movement to Iraq.  We don’t begrudge them their noisy training.
 
Eyes wide shut in the pilothouse. Somewhere in the secret jungles of Camp Lejune.
  
 
Capt'n Lynnie and Skinwalker