The Faces of Augusta

Some of the many (80-odd) team members from the SU Augusta Family Festival.

I went to visit Docker Dave and Nicole again tonight, partly to pick up my sunnies and partly to see if Dave had sobered up yet! He had.
Nicole had fooled me into thinking she likes Scrabble but turns out she was only joking.
That made the Scrabble set I took with me redundant.
Instead of playing games they introduced me to their friends John and Maggie and we sat chatting as the night grew darker and colder. Sadly, most of the good stories were declared off-limits to the blog!

This afternoon I attempted to make good on my vow: To take the boat out for my maiden voyage this Summer. I emptied it of all the accumulated debris, mostly fodder for the up-coming garage sale with the odd interesting or useful item scattered amongst it, brushed off the cobwebs and dirt, connected the fuel tank, found the right place for the hose calipers/earmuffs, turned the hose on, switched the engine to run, primed the tank, pulled out the choke, wondered how many other things I'd forgotten, and gave the cord a pull.
The first 4-5 pulls yielded nothing.
The 6th caused the motor to burst into life for a few short seconds before expiring- just enough to give me hope that I was on the right track.
I wasn't.
The next 20-30 pulls resulted in failure. The motor refused to start. I tinkered with things, tried a few different settings, opened the cowling to have a look and see if anything reached out to grab me and say "don't forget to adjust the whatchamacallit" but nothing did, put the cowling back on, gave it a few more tries then gave up. What else could I do?
The brief moment of engine life was apparently just a tease.
It will require a greater marine brain than mine to get it started/work out what's wrong.
The lack of activity for the last two years could have something to do with it I guess, though I don't know what. Maybe the fuel is past its use-by-date? Perhaps it has developed land-based dementia. Or possibly the two year time-span since I was given my one and only lesson on how to start/run/maintain/not sink the boat was too great an encumbrance to overcome at the first attempt.
I would have rung Bruce, the previous owner, and benefactor, for a fe but he's away in America somewhere and not knowing the time difference or his exact location, decided not to call in case he was asleep somewhere.
Plan B is to go looking for someone "boatie" tomorrow and see if they can set me straight.
You can be sure that if I manage to get the HoltPress Vessel afloat you will see and hear all about it! Ahoy!