Close but no Cigar

Well, we almost made it...

We came up a little short today. We left Apalachicola this morning at 7:00am under freezing conditions. It could not have been 50F degrees when we pulled off the dock this morning. It was a far cry from the 90F degrees in Clearwater a day earlier.

Anyway, the first thing we noticed about 15 minutes into the trip was that the starboard engine was not turning up the proper RPM's. I thought it was one of the fuel filters getting clogged until I noticed some more than normal black smoke coming out of the exhaust. A quick trip to the engine room uncovered the issue. The turbo hose on the starboard engine was cracked. As a result, boost pressure was down and we were running too rich which was causing the black exhaust smoke. There wasn't much we could do at that point so we continued on at a reduced speed. We just had to reduce rpm to match the pressure with the proper fuel mixture until the exhaust cleared up. Not a big deal as we were able to manage the problem.

But then the real problem occurred about 30 minutes later. The entire trip the starboard throttle cable was very stiff. When I mean stiff, I mean like we needed both hands to pull back the throttle. It wasn't that big an issue the first three days as we were running off shore. So once we throttled up, we didn't touch the throttle again until we came into the marina. Well today the weather was bad off-shore so we ran the ICW. There was boat traffic and some no wake zones. Well after a few times up and down on the very stiff throttle, the cable finally broke. We ran slow while I was down in the engine room trying to jerry-rig a fix, but I couldn't get it to work. So we just had to limped into Panama City, about 40 miles away, where we will need a mechanic to fix both the turbo and the throttle cable.  Since the boat is all safe and sound we will fly home tomorrow.



 That is how it goes sometimes. The boat is only about 100 miles from its new home. We talked with the owner and determined there was really no need for us to stick around. We couldn't get anyone out to the boat this weekend, so it will be Monday before anyone is on the boat for the repair. The owner will come down to the boat on Wednesday and finish the last few miles.

Thanks to all who followed along. This was definitely one of the more interesting if not challenging trips. We have the Meridian Rendezvous this coming weekend, April 27th, but I will be flying to Long Island on Sunday the 28th for another trip on a 44' Sea Ray to the Washington, DC area. So stay tuned...