Get her motor running.

Mack spent some time in his favorite place on Kenutu -- under her floorboards -- and came up needing a lot of repairs. It all started with an alternator rebuild. The shop he went to, Wayne Electric, did great work and were fast and reasonably priced. And they gave him a magnetic titty calendar. Which is why I think he went looking for more work to be done.  

This is an alternator. It recharges the batteries when the engine is running. I am learning so much.

Chris from RS Marine met us aboard Kenutu and brainstormed some repairs that could improve her performance. A rebuilt starter was on the menu, as was a new exhaust elbow. Along the way, someone had taken the exhaust pipe and made it smaller on its way out, which was apparently dumb. Chris also suggested a rebuilt manifold, which we knew we needed because we'd already applied some JB Weld to a leak on it. ​

This is a starter with a solenoid on top. The starter (the black thing) helps the engine start and the solenoid (the silver thing) controls power to the starter.

This is the heat exchanger. It takes the cold sea water and uses it to cool the engine. Ours was full of salt and zinc and other junk, or at least we figured it was. So Chris cleaned it all out for us.

This is an exhaust riser and an exhaust elbow. This takes the exhaust and the sea water and shoots it out the back of the boat. Our old one was smaller for some weird reason, which is bad since it's where the badness escapes and it should be at least as big as earlier in the schematic.

​A couple of fuel filters made it onto the list, since Mack had ordered them online anyway. The ones on Perky had some cumbersome screws and multiple connections, which Chris pointed out would make you want to sink the boat if you had to change the filters and bleed the lines out in the middle of the ocean in waves. The solution was to update the fuel/water separator and the secondary fuel filter with more accessible features and add a pump to make it easy to bleed the lines. ​

The fuel/water separator, which lets you just unscrew the bottom part and do the work. I have no idea what the work is.

The pump, which will make bleeding the lines way easier and make the work quick and clean. Sure.

The old version made you unscrew four things at the top, which you would certainly drop into the bilge abyss. This one lets you unscrew that black thing, fill a new one with fuel, and then screw it in place. Presto chango.

As a bonus Chris cleaned up all the gunk on the engine and showed us that revving it and changing gears in the dock is no big deal. Oh, and he left us this very comforting note. 

Perky always hummed, but with these updates she's absolutely purring. Mack's favorite place is now a happy place.