Thursday, July 17, 2014

Our first major setback!

     It's been awhile since I've updated our blog so I thought I had better do that while I have a wifi connection. We made good progress the past few days and were sitting in Fernandina Beach, FL just south of the Georgia boarder ready to continue north. I had been working on my generator for the past few days and I managed to get it running but it seemed to have a governor problem because it just wouldn't run at the right RPM and it was backfiring a lot with a real bad exhaust leak problem. I called a tech to come take a look at it and the news wasn't good. We have to replace it because fixing it is not a long term solution, much less cost effictive it seemed. So, we have headed back south again to a little town on the St. Johns river about 40 miles south of Jacksonville to get the generator replaced. So, here we sit in Green Cove Springs, FL waiting for our new generator to arrive so it can be installed. It looks like we will be here at least a week, maybe a little longer depending on when the generator arrives. Getting the old one out and the new one in is going to require some major disassembly of the salon to access the hatch over the generator to remove and replace it. Hindsight says I should have made the hatch accessible without having to remove the flooring first. Well, hopefully we will get this all done and be on our way again soon. Most everything else seems to be running pretty well. These little Perkins engines just purr along and don't drink a lot of fuel which is nice. I do have a small oil leak on the port engine which the tech is going to fix for me while he is here but otherwise, not a problem one with the engines. (So Far!) I have also found a small fuel leak in my day tank which is more a nuisance than a problem but I would like to get that fixed as well. I will have to see if I can find someone that can repair an aluminum tank in the boat because I don't think you can get that tank out to get it repaired.
     So far, life on the Molly B has been good. We are learning a lot about this pleasure boat living and we are beginning to realize how to conserve on the cruising budget. You can really spend a lot of money doing this, but there are many ways to do it a lot less expensively. The trouble is we are learning these lessons the hard way, and that's always the expensive way of learning anything. Sure hope we can get these costs under control once we get everything working properly and learn a little more about how to do it.
    
       Until next time,
Fair winds and Following seas
         The Molly B

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