I spent the morning working on my outboard motor.  Since it had been running so fitfully, I decided to take the carburetor off and spray it with the carburetor cleaner I have on board.  I was afraid that I was putting too much oil in the gas, and it was stopping up the tiny holes in the carburetor.

I wrestled the motor into the boat, and attacked it with a vengeance.  Everything came off fine, looked clean enough, but I sprayed it anyway and put it all back together.

When I mounted the motor again and tried to start it, it did NOT start at all.  How frustrating!  So I sat and contemplated the problem.  It didn't sound like it was getting ANY gas now.  I removed the plug at the bottom of the carburetor and sure enough, no fuel came out when it should have.

I removed the fuel lines leading to the carburetor and had plenty of fuel there.  The problem was in the carburetor that I had just repaired!  So much for my mechanical ability!

I took it apart again and found no reason for the fuel to stop there.  Put it back together, mounted the motor.  Same problem!

After an hour of studying the problem and finding no reasonable solution, I was ready for help.  I walked up the hill and asked some guys mowing the wet lawn if they knew anybody who worked on two-cycle engines.  They pointed me to Mariners Landing just up the road - a place that sells boats.

I checked and it looked like they had repair facilities, but it was only 8:30 and they were not yet open.  In frustration, I headed back to the boat to wait for the expert to arrive at the shop.

As I sat and stared at the motor, I couldn't resist trying again.  This time I lifted the motor off and mounted it in the companionway hatch with the foot hanging down into the cabin.  That made for a much nicer place to work on it.

I located the problem in the tiny pin that rides on the float in the carburetor.  The pin was sticking in the closed position when it should float freely up and down with the float.  Everything was there, but it wasn't working.  Why?

After another hour of staring at the problem, I suddenly realized that the float was upside down!  And that caused the pin to stick closed.  When I took the carburetor off the very first time, I had put the float back on wrong!

When I reversed the float and put it all back together the motor started fine.  Eureka! I did it.  Well, I cleaned up the mess I made, but I didn't think I had really solved the mystery of the fitfully running motor.

The wind was bad.  It was blowing hard up the river with some pretty good waves about, but it was 10:30 and I was eager to make some miles.

The first problem was getting away from the dock.  The wind was blowing directly against me on a lee shore.  I had docked on the shore side of the Fore and Aft docks for protection against the waves.  It wasn't much protection, but it was the best around.  I was surprised that I didn't get sea sick during the night because the boat rocked steadily a little bit and pretty good when barges came by. I remember waking up 4 or 5 times during the night when waves from the barges bounced my boat.

Docked at the Fore and Aft Restaurant

I put the mainsail up, walked the boat to the end of the pier, swung it good and pushed hard - and, fortunately, the motor started right up.  So I managed to avoid being ignominiously blown to shore.

But as soon as I got out in the water, I could tell that I had more than I had bargained for.  The forecasted winds Northwest at 10-20 mph, were really blowing at 20-30.  From the start it was a wild, bucking ride.  The waves were high and the wind howled.  I managed to keep her going with the mainsail barely under control and the motor pushing too.  The boat reared and bucked over the high waves.  Then the wind would scream at me with a fierceness that seemed personal.  The angry wind wanted to blow me back where I came from.

I tacked back and forth into the facing wind.  This kind of wind at your back could push you at 10-15 ph.  In your face, you do good to make 2 miles an hour, which is what I did for three hours.

I must have had 4 or 5 barges pass and maybe some other really interesting things that I saw on this cloudy, cold, miserable day, but I was so busy "staying alive" that I didn't have a chance to take notes.  And my feet were cold… and my hands were cold… and wet… and miserable.

William Least Heat-Moon passed this way with favorable weather and made these notes:
"Lawrenceburg, Indiana, almost two hundred years old like many of the other river towns and villages along there, has an appealing main street which a highway traveler misses because of the bypass and which the Ohio traveler also misses because of the big levee built on what was once Gamblers' Row, a place of boisterous vice infamous from Pittsburgh to New Orleans.  Today things have settled down to a casino boat and whiskey making…

"A half century ago a reporter wrote an anonymous squib about this piece of the Ohio:
The riverbanks are people with families who live in shacks or houseboats.  They raise a small patch of tobacco for their own use, and subsist mainly on catfish and greens, accepting the periodical high waters with philosophic calm.  They move up the hills into deserted barns until the water recedes, and then return to their shanties to resume their usual occupation of gazing dispassionately at the river."

Zigzag - back and forth - making only a couple hundred yards good for each trip across the river.  I beat to windward, clawing my way inch by inch into the wind.  Sometimes the motor would run fine - sometimes fitfully - sometimes not at all.  What a mystery!  I decided the problem had nothing to do with the mixture of the gas.  It was getting gas and fire - maybe it was an air problem.  Perhaps a wasp had built a nest in the air intake.  Could be.  But why did it run okay sometimes?

Finally at 1:30, I found a place to stop - the Great Miami River at Mile 491, exactly located at two important benchmarks - the Indiana state line and the beginning of the Central time zone.  The river was a perfect place to stop with enough room for me to swing all the way around on my anchor.  But after studying the way the wind blew on the river, I decided to anchor close to shore just out of the wind.

I was completely exhausted after three hours of terror.  I slept for an hour, then called Sarah.  She said I sounded discouraged for the first time.  Little wonder.

After two hours, it seemed the wind had died down some and I decided to try again.  Sure enough the wind had lowered to just above reasonable.  It seemed more like the predicted 10-20 rather than the experienced 20-30.

Once again, I fought my way to windward, but now the wind was just low enough to remove some of the sheer terror.  It seemed I took a million trips back and forth across the river slowly making my way forward directly into the wind.

When I turned the 90 degree bend at Aurora, mile 496, the wind was suddenly coming from the starboard side which would be great for sailing.  But, of course, it immediately began to die.  I was shocked at the change.  The wind's anger WAS personal. How can the wind blow always in your face for 200 miles on a winding river?  I don't know but it does.

As the wind decreased but came from starboard, I depended on the motor again.  It ran great for a long time, then mysteriously coughed and died. Why?

As I approached Rising Sun about 5 p.m., I had had it!  I decided to find a place there to stay the night, call Sarah and tell her to come get me on Saturday.  She would have the day off, so she could come.  We could go into Cincinnati and buy a new Johnson 6 hp motor with a long foot - the recommended motor for this boat.  I have heard this outboard would cost about $1100, but it would be worth every penny to have something reliable.

Or maybe Rising Sun would have a two-cycle expert who could repair this one.

The people of Rising Sun were having an outdoor celebration in the late afternoon light.  It looked like a beauty pageant in a pavilion right on the shore.  Everybody was there instead of at the marina helping me.

And what a marina - an old barge with gas pumps but not even a board to shore.   You have to have a boat to get to the barge!  I was tempted to walk down to the party, but couldn't get to shore without wading in the cold water.  Next door was another barge with a tiny building where soft drinks were sold. It was named, "River Cheer."  But it didn't have a very good mooring either.  I was NOT cheered.

Both docks were really awful places for leaving my boat for an hour, much less for the night.  I kept looking to see if I could ease my boat behind the barges for protection in the shallow water, but it was impossible!  I decided to move on, disappointed.

The wind was very reasonable now, and I made several miles.  Then I began looking for a hurricane hole to spend the night.  There were very few available.  I decided to go for Gunpowder Creek in Lower East End Bottom at mile 514, near Hamilton, Kentucky.  But I was going slow.  I had to turn on my running lights about 9 p.m. and finally pulled into the safe creek just about dark at 9:30.  I didn't even try to write in my journal.  I just ate a little and turned in for the night, glad that the ordeal of this day was over.
Mile 514 Gunpowder Creek
Mile 484 Fore & Aft Restaurant at Addyston
           30 Miles made good today

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