Well, it was bound to happen. After all the work done on both engines as well as the boat in general, over the winter, something was bound to go wrong. I thought that we had this all behind us, but the mechanical gods were annoyed at something, or somebody (me!).
Went down to the boat following the holiday weekend. Alice was working this weekend, so it was just Jesse and I; boys weekend. We decided to take her out for some time-trial runs in anticipation for our upcoming trip down to Baltimore, Md. My grandson, Tyler, was going to be celebrating his first birthday in August, and his dad was planning a big party. I decided to incorporate our vacation into the trip down to the party. We would leave Barnegat, travel down past Atlantic City on to Cape May, NJ for day 1. Day 2 would be across the Delaware Bay and River into the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal. Day 3 would be on into the Chesapeake Bay and down to Baltimore, MD and its Inner Harbor area. After the party we would return via a similar route.
I began the planning process early in July, researching available marinas and routes. I was hoping to travel down the ICW behind the barrier islands of New Jersey to Cape May, NJ thereby avoiding an exposed ocean run from Barnegat to Cape May Inlet, a distance of almost 85 miles. Depending on sea and wind conditions, this could be a great leg of the trip or pure hell. Taking the 'back road' down the bays and small inlets would offer a reprieve if the weather turned sour. Everything was being developed on paper, but I needed to know what to expect from the boat.
Jesse and I went down Saturday afternoon, having had a business meeting in the morning. Gotta pay for this lifestyle somehow!. We spent an uneventful evening on the boat and got up early the next morning. Left the marina around 8am, heading south along the ICW towards Manahawkin Bay and Little Egg Bay beyond. I was hoping to reach Atlantic City via the bay, and then take a return trip outside in the ocean and up the coastline. This way we can compare performance data and results on Vintage Viking.
We had a light breakfast underway. Navigating along the ICW through the numerous No Wake Zones (NWZ) along the LBI towns of Spray Beach, Brant Beach and Beach Haven caused us to take what seemed like an eternity to reach Egg Harbor Bay and the breakwaters of Beach Haven Inlet. This is a very misleading inlet, as it has shoaled over time and unless you are shallow of draft and/or very foolish you stay away. Further south is the intended destination of Atlantic City, home of NJ gamblers!. You can see the tall oceanfront buildings in the distance, and the construction cranes working on yet another gambling resort. Appropriately, I had a feeling of 'taking a gamble' with this trip. I hadn't traveled that far on the new engines. It was supposed to be a 42 mile trip each way.
We traveled down the back bays without much ado. I watched the FloScan to keep track of fuel consumption, and since much of this route is through NWZ's, we never really got much opportunity to open her up and see what she was made of. I took advantage of this slower pace to teach Jesse the basics of speed vs. fuel consumption vs. distance of travel in a given day. This would prove to be helpful in our planning of the Baltimore trip.
We made Atlantic City by 1:00 pm., roughly 4-1/2 hours from when we left Barnegat, NJ. At this rate, it would take us almost 9 hours to make Cape May, NJ, assuming Atlantic City is the halfway point of the 85 mile overall distance from Barnegat to Cape May. We stopped at Kammerman's Marina in Atlantic City Harbor, across from the State Marina and Trumpp's Resort. We took on fuel and water here, and met up with a couple bringing their vintage Chris Craft Constellation up the ICW from Virginia to New York. They were traveling 'outside' since Cape May and had the wind at their back. I asked how the trip was and the woman said she didn't know since she slept through most of it. Even though the Constellation was 20 feet longer and 5 feet wider than Vintage Viking, I deduced that if she could 'sleep' through the trip the sea conditions couldn't be that bad. I decided to venture out the Absecon Inlet and take to outside ocean route north to Barnegat Inlet. Paid the tab at Kammerman's and headed out.
Leaving the inlet, we got exposed to the southerly winds. Coming across our starboard beam, they gave us a slightly rough trip into the open ocean. Once we made it past the outer marker buoy and we turned north-northeast towards Barnegat, it got a little smoother. The wind was now behind us, and once we got up on plane, the boat was much smoother. We ran about 18-20 MPH for the most part, and our FloScan was showing a considerable burn rate of almost 44GPH. Having nothing to gauge this data against, I kept an eye on the totalizer to make sure that we would be OK on fuel capacity.
Jesse took the wheel for part of the trip, having gained a little confidence the weekend before. The seas were only slightly rolling, and as long as he kept the speed in unison with the rollers, we had a nice ride. I took the time to show him how the GPS and chart plotter work to help you plan out your trip and stay on the most efficient course. We passed a catamaran sailing north, and began to feel like we fit into this life of cruising up and down the coast.
We made it back up to Barnegat Inlet in about 2-3/4 hours, and after another 45 minutes we would be back at our marina. However, as we entered the bay from Double Creek Channel,I started hearing a 'hissing/farting" sound coming from the bilge. I brought her down to idle, and opened the hatches. It appeared that the port engine was leaking exhaust, and I initially suspected that it was the rubber riser ell swivel that gave us some problems when we installed the engines. I couldn't find any traces of water leaking, and the heat exchanger still had sufficient cooling fluid. But the fume alarm was intermittently sounding, so I turned on the bilge blowers. Must be leaking exhaust fumes.
The mechanic from the marina that had done most of the work on the boat got into a tiff with the owners and had quit. The remaining mechanic was more of an outboard guy, and I didn't want to take any chances. I contacted the surveyor from my purchase for a recommendation, and I phoned up the new mechanic. I arranged to bring the boat to his marina during the upcoming week. When I did, I put the boat in one of his empty slips, gave him a summary of the work done to date and what the current issues were. I wanted to get it checked out and resolved before we left on our "Big Trip" in 3 weeks.
What happened next was unbelievably upsetting. The more they investigated the engines the more they uncovered faulty or incomplete work. The exhaust leak was coming from a bad intake gasket, and as he took the manifold off he found loose bolts and other sloppy work. I instructed him to go over both engines. I was told from the previous mechanic that the tachs were 'bad' and not reading above 3000 RPM, but that the engines were fine. Nothing was further from the truth!! The tachs were fine, but the engines were not developing enough RPM and were slugging, causing excessive wear on the newly-rebuilt powerplants. We hauled the boat to make sure we had the right props, no bottom issues slowing the boat, etc.
What he found was that the starboard engine had the wrong carburetor! This is the same part that was such an 'issue' with the mechanic in my marina, after having broken it and loosing the replacement I provided. They wound up installing an undersized carburetor meant for a smaller Mercruiser. UGGHH!!! I contacted my marina to get the original 'broken' carburetor returned so that we can rebuild it and not surprisingly I was met with resistance and total denial. I'll deal with these guys later; I need to resolve the mechanical issues and get the boat seaworthy. I now had absolutely zero faith in the work done by them, and put total (maybe not complete) confidence in Bill & Steve, the new guys. But I did like the way they systematically went about diagnosing the various deficiencies and sea trialing boat each time they made a modification. Over the next 3 weeks, they worked diligently to get the boat to where even they would be comfortable taking her on a 600 mile cruise. I located a pair of original-spec carburetors in California and had them rebuilt to the original specifications. These arrived just two days before I was scheduled to pick up the boat.
During this layup at the mechanic's marina I took the opportunity to conduct some of the improvements that I had planned on. I replaced the Formica counter/steel sink in the galley with a custom-fabricated quartz/granite counter and new sink and faucet. I had a matching one made for the head, but this would need to wait until after the trip. I bought a new leather sofa for the salon, and installed a new remote searchlight on the fly bridge. I extended and expanded the inverter system, so that we could be more comfortable on our cruise away from shore power, and I installed a fly bridge-to-salon intercom system so that we could communicate while underway. We were getting closer to departure date (August 5th) and I was getting nervous. Plus I was spending more dollars repairing issues that should not have been a problem had they been done correctly the first time. But I came this far, I couldn't leave without having the boat running correctly. I was tempering frustration and anxiety of being done in time to leave with anger and contempt for having been had by my previous mechanic.
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