Burping the Car and Paddling Jenner in the Fog

Sunday October 11, 2015 Jenner CA.

Some things don’t go as planned

So all I had to do to finish off yesterdays repair of my car’s coolant leak was to fill up the radiator with coolant and it should be good to go if there were no leaks,…………..but.

When I turned the key to start the engine all I got was a big clunk, oh, oh. I knew what that meant. I got a lot of the coolant into the engine when I took off the intake manifold and now there was some water inside the engine and it wouldn’t turn over.

Experience

From experience, I knew that if I kept clunking it, it should finally turn the engine over, so I kept clunking it, about twenty times before the engine turned over, but it would not start. I cranked and cranked and it fired occasionally, but would not run.

I checked and double checked my work to make sure I had hooked everything back up right on the engine and it looked like I had.

I knew what I had to do. I had to remove all the spark plugs and clean them all up so they’d fire again. It was a good time to have a look at the spark plugs as I haven’t checked them for wear in a long time. I cleaned them up and regapped them, put some antiseize on the threads and put them back in, very carefully as not to strip out the threads.

I didn’t think it was going to start as I turned the key and it started right up, after sputtering for a bit,  so I let it run to warm it up, watching for coolant leaks.

Steam out the exhaust pipe

I didn’t see any coolant leaks but shortly, steam began to come out of the exhaust pipe, oh, oh, I thought, clouds of steam coming out of there. I’m thinking I must have a coolant leak into the engine, but then I thought, I bet I just pumped a lot  of coolant into the exhaust system and it’s just getting hot and vaporizing as the car warms up, I hope.

I waited and waited and it seemed to be getting less steam so I took it for a ride down the road and back and no more steam. Great.

Off to kayak

No coolant leaks either so I headed down to Jenner to kayak for the day. I could see that it was fogged in as I arrived at Jenner. I put my boat in the water and headed down towards the river’s mouth.

On the way, I went past my loon friend preening. It’s turned it’s body over here and is preening it’s underside.

Foggy

I headed over to the side of Penny Island and paddled down along here in the fog.

River’s mouth is closed sorta

I could hear the ocean a waves pounding the beach way before I got to the closed river’s mouth area.

Even though the river’s mouth was closed up with sand, high ocean waves were breaking over the beach, so in some ways, the river’s mouth wasn’t closed.

I paddled right up to the ocean water coming over the sandy beach and was watching for any big fish coming in or anything else I might see, when all of a sudden there were big turbulent waves right in front of me as a big wave had come in and was really flowing into the estuary over the sandy beach.  I always think of my camera first in these situations as it’s not water proof and decided I better hang on for a possible fast ride backwards as the water increased.

It was a bit spooky as the foamy water pushed me backwards rather fast, but I maintained my upright position and decided staying back a bit might be a better idea.

I’m looking at the sandy beach closing the river’s mouth here with big waves breaking over the sand and coming into the river. I was right up there on the other side of that foam just a bit ago, before the water abruptly pushed  me back.

I decided it was safer sitting in the foam watching the ocean waves break over the sand.

There were some birds sitting in the fog just across from me.

I was sitting in this foam when I heard, hey Bob.

Patti was in her kayak just behind me. She referred to the foam as muck and wasn’t getting in any of it.  We sat around and shot the bull for a bit before heading back towards the boat ramp where I left Patti and continued on over to this channel on the upper end of Penny Island where I had a little nap.

After a short rest, I continued on up the river going past these cormorants resting on this old log.

Waffling fog

The fog was starting to clear and it did for a bit, but then came back in although not as dense as before. It waffled in and out while I watched.

I paddled on up to the muskrat nest area and sat and watched and maybe did a little napping too at this spot.

After a good break there, I paddled across the river to Paddy’s rock where these cormorants where hanging out just below it.

I continued on past Paddy’s rock and was paddling along here where I could see some birds along the shoreline up ahead.

I passed by these cormorants and these merganser ducks resting.

These mallard ducks came out of the weeds as I passed.

And this egret was fishing along the shoreline, but I didn’t see it catch anything.

I could hear some geese honking just ahead and was looking for them when I ran into them here. They spooked and took off with a lot of honking.

From there it wasn’t far to the boat ramp, so I headed on in for the day and went on home where I didn’t do much of anything the rest of the day.

At least the car’s coolant leak seems to be fixed which is a good thing as now I can get on with doing some other projects that need to be done before winter.

Nice day.