Tick Tick Tick

Athena's engine is still not quite reliable.
Started her up on Sunday morning, she turned a few times and puttered along. The new batteries installed last weekend are holding their charge.
I let her run for about a half an hour to see how she would do. I was about to turn her off, but decided to let her run a few moments more... A very telling decision, for not but a few moments later, she sputtered to a stop. Fuel lines full of air again. This time I KNOW for sure she had plenty of fuel in the fuel tank. I heared a humming from the "engine room," the tiny little compartment squeezed between the hull, the base of the cockpit, starboard storage, and port aft birth. What could be making the humming... I crawled down from the cockpit into the starboard storage to access the engine and sleuth out the humming... It appeared to be coming from the Racor fuel filter. I put my ear right up to it, humming for sure. I closed the valve between the Racor and the fuel line to the engine, the humming stopped. The elusive air leak is definitely in the Racor filter. Nice to have found, but bummer to have found that the engine still isn't quite right, so close to the Thanksgiving goal.
Didn't feel like dealing with the engine again this weekend. I was on a mission to clean up some of the wiring.
This weekend I pulled the VHF antenna cable from the base of the mast, beneath the floor, and up port side storage, to near the navigation station. I need to borrow a drill to install more holes between the storage and the navigation station. I also pulled wiring for a future music radio and for the VHF radio from the fuse box above the salon on the starboard side of the boat down under the floor and back up again to the navigation station on the port side. I pulled the triplex wire from the base of the mast, beneath the floor, and up to just behind the fuse panel but realized the wire is about 5 feet too short (so had to make a second trip to West Marine that day and will have to have a splice in the line, oh well, such is life). I also replaced all three running lights (one green and one red at the bow and one white at the stern), ran new wiring to the ones at the bow and reconnected the stern light. They all worked, yae! Much of this wiring work I learned while watching Brian help me convert the Mercedes to run on veggie oil.
Who would ever have believed I'd learn how to use these cool electrical tools... I also found two wires connected directly to the batteries that led to nothing and disconnected those. I'm not sure I'm making the wiring any neater, but at least all the connections will be cleaned up a bit, and I'm not sure yet which lines, but I know Capt. John had mentioned to me that plain ol' household wiring had been used for some, and that's not preferable in the boat environment.

As the time ticks, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to accomplish all.
Things I didn't get done yet that I really should have done, is get the 4 hp dinghy motor into the shop and running again, clean off the bottom of the sailboat herself, and clean off the bottom of my kayak and my dinghy. I'm almost scared to pull those out of the water now... barnacles galore i'm sure.
Still have found no partner to go sailing with, and that has led to nightmares, amoung other mind musings.