And escaping the clutches of Medusa
Lat: 30 deg 12 N
Long: 115 deg 50 W
Boat: 5.0 knts at 000 deg T
Wind: 12.0 knts at NNW
Distance to Ensenada: 101 nm

Khulula is on the move again. After a 5 day stop in San Carlos waiting out a gale, we pulled up anchor in the wee hours of this morning and began plodding our way north west again. There was bit of excitement today as for the first time in our entire trip, we had engine troubles. Our trust diesel started choking a high rpms, leading us to conclude it was a fuel problem.

First we replaced one fuel filter, then the other, still no love. We then tracked down a suspicious kink in the line, along with a ball of hair up stream of the filter. That seemed to solve the problem for about 15 minutes, then once again, the engine was dying out for lack of fuel. We finally bit the bullet and pulled then entire fuel line out of the tank to try and locate the problem. After some high-tech wire prodding and cheeks-out blowing, a giant wad of what can only be described as gunk came flying out of the intake hose. Its nice when you can see such an obvious culprit to a problem. We re-assembled everything and the engine has been purring for the past 3 hours (knock on wood). Oh well, we were going to change the filters in San Diego anyways. The drama didn’t end there though… As we’re in colder water now (14 C, yeah, that’s flippin’ cold! It’s long-johns, toques and boots on night shift now), there is lots of kelp around. Once the engine was running again, we we’re trying to account for our slow speeds. It could only be that a kelp monster had attached its self to our keel. So we sent Bryson over board to investigate. What ensued was a battle of epic proportions. Armed only with a dive knife, Brys fought off a 36-armed slimy sea-weed Medusa. Free of her viscous clutches, we’re now running scared in fear of another attack.