July 21 – Ottawa (Hartwell Locks)
45°23′0″ N 75°41′58″ W

Today was my second day at this location. More maintenance tasks to be done. First on the list was to try to fix the tachometer & the engine start/stop switches at the upper helm station.

The tachometer there worked intermittently during the first couple of weeks of my trip up the Intra-Coastal Waterway last summer then it stopped completely. Same for the engine start/stop switches (circled in red in the photo below).

I purchased a new tachometer before I left Goderich but never really had the opportunity to work on it until now.

Unfortunately I discovered that a straight swap is not going to be possible because the housing for the original tachometer is too small to hold the new unit and the hole that is cut in the dashboard panel is just slightly larger than the new one. I will need to fabricate an adaptor piece for the new tachometer.

I hooked up the new tachometer anyway but I couldn’t get it to work so I set that project aside & decided to take a look at the engine start/stop switches. This whole arrangement is exposed to the elements so I figured that the intense heat, rain & salt air that the boat has been exposed to in Florida since 1993 had taken its toll. I was right about that. The 3-position start/stop switch was badly corroded & when I took it apart to clean it some plastic parts of the inner switch housing simply crumbled in my hands. Oh, oh!

I cleaned up the switch as best as I could & put it back together. I can now start the engine from the upper helm station but for some reason the engine stop switch is not independent from the lower helm station so I have to stop the engine by using the lower helm switch. I guess that’s where the crumbled bits of plastic from the inside of the upper helm switch comes into the equation. But, my efforts did manage to get the original tachometer working again, so I have concluded that the wiring for the start/stop switch & the tachometer are interconnected. Hopefully a new switch will solve all of the problems at the upper helm.

Shortly after I put everything back together a fire truck from the Ottawa Fire Department arrived at the lock station. Perhaps they heard that an amateur mechanic was mucking around with his boat’s wiring & they came down to stand by-just in case….

However, it turned out that they were at the lock for a work exercise. They set up their pumper unit beside the canal & ran it for awhile. Too bad I washed the boat yesterday – they could rinse Santosha down in no time flat!

After all that excitement I decided it was time for a late lunch/early/supper. There was a pound of bacon in the fridge with my name on it! While on board the boat I generally like to cook a whole package of bacon at once & then use it up over the next several days. That way I only have to clean up the bacon fat cooking mess once.

After cooking the bacon I was amazed at how much fat I collected from the frying pan. It seems a shame to throw it away.

Perhaps I can make bio-diesel with it. Santosha would catch a lot of attention as she chugged through the locks with her diesel exhaust smelling like a local diner’s Sunday morning breakfast special. Hmmm, I think I’ll have to do some research on-line about bacon fat bio-diesel. Maybe I could cut my fuel costs & have another good reason to eat more bacon!

Cheers!