A Grand Day Out Despite All Odds

When It Rains it Pours (diesel).

Novice Mariners Take a One Two Punch But Finish the Round.

The morning began with a press of the snooze button. Half an hour later, the engines were running. We were glad to have done the engine room checklist the night before. The Hudson River was quiet until we hit a blender of commuting ferries. The sunrise over New York created an amazing endless skyline silhouette . Water towers galore.

The plan was to drop Sarah and Jake at Chelsea Piers on 34th street. Which worked except the powers that be decided to give us a sneak preview of our day. In trying to pull away from the dock too quickly, Tim let the stern swing over a tad too far and gave Slowly's side a new battle scar, while popping a fender off its line. But Epoxy fills scrapes and we turned around for the fender; we figured that was our lesson for the day.

How wrong we were. Professor Weather decided to give us a pop quiz in fog navigation. Shortly after passing the Statue of Liberty, and making it past the Staten Island Ferry landing, visibility fell to less than three quarters of a mile (at times nearing none) for the rest of the day. Hannah kept us safe with her eagle eyes and eagerness to blow the fog horn. The Radar did it's job, and the GPS helped to keep us on course as well. We proceeded just outside the main channel leaving New York to leave room for any vessels such as the large transport ship we passed. It was first the low drone of a fog horn, next a large blob on the radar, and lastly a great grey gorilla in the mist (in a boat).

After making it through Raritan Bay we felt on the road again-- [Just can't wait to get on the road again - Ed.] at least for a minute or two. Tim noticed unhappy gages reporting low oil pressure and cooler temperatures coming from the starboard engine. Opening the hatch to the engine room, there was arterial bleeding of what turned out to be diesel coming from the far side of engine, squirting across the engine room. It only took a moment to notice that the high pressure fuel line going from the fuel injector to the third cylinder has broken in two. Although a giant pain in the transom, this was not a huge deal. A few phone calls to our favorite engineers (Thanks Oliver and Dragon!) gave us the info we needed. We decided to patch the line and limp to the next available port (instead of turning back). We were happy to find a few inches of fuel line just the right diameter and some small hose clamps. This is a good reason to never throw anything out!

Three hours later, Hannah was still fighting the fog and Tim was finishing up debugging the patch. The patch was still spraying diesel and the seas were picking up. It was clearly time to make for the shore. We headed for the Manasquan River to get a slip in a marina and have a new fuel line overnighted to us.

Rich at Hoffman's Marina was very kind and helped us get safely into our slip. We were happy to luck upon such an professional marina. We are humorously out of place amongst an impressive fleet of fancy sport fishing boats. After ordering the part, and filling out bellies, we conked out for a few hours. Out at sea, we had had doubts about our day's journey and our sanity. Now, settled and content, we are thankful that: the seas were pretty good, we navigated the fog well while on one engine, we managed our first break-down on the water, the currents in the Manasquan were bearable, American Diesel had our fuel pipe in stock, Fedex can get it here tomorrow, and we meeting kind and interesting folk here in New Jersey. A great day in many ways.