Our Travels

To use the word again, “never,” as in… We never thought our girl would lose her heart, AND, once that happened, we never thought it would take so long to get her going again! But Friday was an amazing day! Everything related to the brand-new engine was all set. Boat/engine hours set at one, not zero, but one. Don’t ask; it’s all part of the process🙄. This is part of the final steps: hook the “all important diagnostic computer” to the engine, start her up, and take the boat out for a shake-down.

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Captain Todd bid farewell, and they were off, ever so slowly.

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The first mate/camera person/yours-truly (aka Susie), dashed to the car and headed down the street to find a vantage point from which to document the day. There was still that giant gaping hole in the floor and three men on board who needed to be able to get from the engine room to the helm. Didn’t need me in the way.

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Beautiful! Just beautiful! I can’t tell you how exciting it was to film our SaltyMare cruising under her own power. What a day!

SaltyMare returned to the slip, and we got her tied up. Success! Right? Well, almost. She sounds and runs beautifully. But just like raising kids, there is always more to the story.

Each engine, like ours, has a factory designed maximum RPM (they are actually made to run at that maximum setting all the time, 24×7, believe it or not). One of the many checks is to make sure at WOT (Wide Open Throttle) she is doing as she was designed. Well, she came up short. Why? The typical reasons are dirty (crap growing) bottom or some sort of problem with the propeller (dings or wrong pitch). Unfortunately, we are too heavy for this yard to lift us to check it out, so we have to wait to get into a yard that can. The area we’re in is very shallow and a dead end on the “bay,” hence not sure we could even find a diver willing to go into the water to check it that way. SO…. it’s good, but we are still in the PROCESS! More delay. Rats.

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All parties concerned feel strongly the engine is fantastic and the boat can be reassembled. What? That’s right! We can start putting the girl back together! No hesitation; come on, let’s first cover up the trap door!

So, there is once again “dancing room” in the salon – well, at least there’s a floor – but we’ve got a fair piece to go to get this girl back together, which we will work on while awaiting haul out. Remember, it’s a dadgum process…