We’d discussed a trip to the Trent-Severn waterway, and decided that since our 2016 cruise season was abbreviated and without a Bahamas visit, we’d head north a bit early and after a stopover in Middle River, we’d head up to NY and the Erie Canal. Our stay in JAX extended over a month, a long time in one place! We departed Jacksonville on May 11, and had an uneventful trip, arriving in Middle River the 24th. A few more maintenance tasks, primary was the injection system, since our trip north was accompanied by some lingering vibration and rough running. Improved from prior to the work completed in JAX, but still not right.
I removed the injectors as well as the fuel injection pump, and took them to the shop to have them evaluated. The shop determined that the injection pump should be overhauled, and that was done, the injectors tested and deemed serviceable. Once re-installed, everything fired off and ran very smoothly, idle was as smooth as I can remember. We topped off fuel tanks, fuel price at just under $2. The total fuel tab: $777.77! Should have played the lottery!
Other maintenance to deal with some wiring issues related to the 120V supply and inverter, nothing broken, but an update of sorts to deal with new electrical code requirements for shore power connections. New installations are required to have ELCI (Equipment Leakage Current Interrupter) breakers on marine shore power connections, and the existing wiring on Maerin is done in a way that creates an imbalance in ground/neutral current sufficient to trip those breakers. The fix involves some re-routing of neutral wiring to eliminate the imbalance. Tedious, but needed.
Our stay at Stansbury, our “home” marina as always, enjoyable! Molly got to spend time with her buds Louie and Cooper, lots of swimming. At nine, she still blasts off the dock into the water, but she pays for it! She was moaning and whining the 2nd day, but still ready to swim!
We managed to keep to our projected 2 week stay, give or take a couple of days! Not bad considering we’d planned a 3 week stay in the past and were there five months! (When we sold our house!)
