Running on Ether

When you live on a can in Monroe Harbor all summer, your power source is a generator. Last year, at the end of summer, the generator quit working. Just stopped. Mark replaced the fuel filter; no go. He replaced the glow plugs. Nada. He called his brother Ed, a mechanic in the UP, who told him he could probably get it going with ether. Which is what we did until the end of the season, when we sailed into shore power at Belmont Harbor.

Every time the cabin filled with the sugary scent of ether, I would think of Hunter S. Thompson and his wise words about a man in the depths of an ether binge.

On a dock, you don’t need to worry about a generator. And with all the ice problems this winter, the generator issue has been quiet. Until a few weeks ago, and the early onset of spring, and the fact that as of May 1st, we will be back on a can.

Mark got the name of a guy who works on generators. He called him on Saturday, Paul came on Sunday. He was a surprisingly young kid, but pretty nice, and as he bent down in the engine room to examine the problem, Mark gave him the detailed story of everything he’d done to try and fix the thing. Paul said he had to come back the next day. We were gone, but he came by, and later called Mark to say he had to take the lift pump and test it. He called again to say he tested it and it didn’t work, and told Mark he had to get a new generator. Paul offered to look into it. He called a third time to quote him a price of a new generator, plus warranty, plus installation, all for a meager $15,000. Mark said he’d get back to him.

My husband checked online and found generators that were less expensive. He also posted the problem on a boaters’ site; fellow boaters (the good community they are) responded in droves. “Sounds like you need a new mechanic,” was the consensus.

Mark broke down and called the Onnan, the generator manufacturer. They charge $400 to send a repair guy for two hours. But compared to fifteen grand, it didn’t sound so bad.

When Dave arrived, first thing he said to me when he got down in the engine room was, “Looks like something is missing. Did somebody take something off this?”

So I call Mark at work, he calls Paul, Paul calls me and asks to talk to Dave, and I hand the phone over. They talk for a few minutes, then Dave hands the phone back. “I can’t come today,” Paul says, “But I will return the part tomorrow.”

“I don’t know what that guy is talking about,” Dave says, “He’s talking about ratios that don’t exist.” Without the part, he can’t test the generator, so he leaves, apologizing that he has to charge me anyway for the visit. “I don’t see half that money,” he explains.

Thus begins a daily series of phone calls to Paul to get the lift pump back. He doesn’t come the next day, or the next. Mark calls him at least twice a day. He tells his brother Ed about the situation, and even Ed calls Paul, to talk to him “mechanic to mechanic” about returning the part he stole. Paul does not return the calls. Finally, Mark gets angry. He leaves a message that says, essentially, this is a small boating world, pal, and if you don’t return that piece, I’m telling every harbor master and every marine sales person and every boater I know that you screwed me over. Paul calls him back that afternoon. He was on vacation in Florida and didn’t take his cell phone. He doesn’t mention any of the messages. He does volunteer to put the pump back in the generator, but Mark refuses to let him onboard. “I’m going to start the thing on ether all summer,” Mark tells him. “Yeah,” Paul agrees, “That’s a good idea.”

The lift pump is waiting beside our door when we get home.

Dave comes for another $400 visit. First thing he says when he walks in the door is, “Do you have an attack goose out there?” Mark and I laugh. Dave is over 6-foot, a Harley guy, with tattoos up and down his arms. He has to go back to his truck for a tool. Mark asks if he should go with him, to protect against the goose. “Nah,” Dave says. But when he has to go out a third time, he asks if Mark will go with him. “I’m not afraid of the goose, though,” he says.

Originally, Paul said there was nothing wrong with the injector pump. He said we needed to replace the whole generator because it wasn’t generating enough compression to pull fuel from injector pump to the injectors.

But Dave finds that it is the injector pump – which the Midwestern Injector people rebuild for less that $400, finding a broken spring that prevented the pump from opening and closing.

When the rebuilt pump arrives, I’m out of town. Mark is excited to put it back together and get it running before I return. He’s hunched down in the engine room, reassembling everything the way Dave instructed him, with his brother Ed on the line. “I had all these washers and these injectors, brass washers, aluminum washers, there was a washer with holes in it – I couldn’t figure out why would a washer have holes in it…. I just had two more fuel lines to put on, the final steps, and there’s an elbow connector coming out of the rebuilt injector pump that went into a coupling that goes up vertically that brought fuel from the primer pump to the injector pump and also fuel to the injectors – it came up to a T – when I was twisting the coupling into the injector pump, threading it into the injector pump, it broke off.”

It’s a $4 piece. It’s on back order till May.