Final Score Me 2, Engine 1

Woohoo, the beast is alive and well thanks to the help of the good forumites at SailNet.  Particularly, Christian.Hess, Maine Sail, DeniseO30, and UnionPacific (I'm sure there are others) for showing me the way and sticking with the thread when they probably have better things to do than help out some schmuck who can't even spell 'deisel'. 

I skipped out of work at 2 today and raced home chanting "The Beast Needs to Be Bled".  I spent some time this morning going through the service manual diagrams and found that in addition to the injectors, there was a banjo bolt on the secondary filter and the low pressure side of the fuel injection pump. 

I knew from dumping a full bowl of fuel in the secondary filter that the fuel lift pump was at least getting the fuel there so I skipped right to the injection pump banjo bleed bolt and turned the ignition to 'On' to activate the fuel lift pump.  I let it run for 30 seconds or so and then cracked the banjo bolt open just enough to let out some fuel.  I let that be for 5 seconds or so, then cranked the bolt tight. 

Not thinking that this would do the trick, but willing to try, I cranked the engine and it sputtered to life almost immediately.  Right after that I heard the first 'sploosh' of the water lift doing muffler doing its thing and blasting water out the back of the boat.  I looked down and saw that raw water pump was also doing its thing and sucking the water from the bucket.  I ran through 2 buckets before shutting it down for now, but plan on putting a big 50 gallon plastic pickle barrel and running it for a while to see if there are any other leaks or issues that might crop up after running for a bit. 

Words can't describe how happy I am right now.  This was the last thing keeping me up at night.  I'm sure other things will come up before the launch but this puts me firmly in the 'splash it' zone.