Well, I was supposed to fly up to S-n-F with a buddy in Miami on Friday, but it appears that may not come to fruition.... I'm currently delivering a boat from Boca Raton FL to Glen Cove LI-NY. Left Palm beach thurs morn and ran to St Augustine in a building N wind, no problem, keep it tucked in tight to the beach, and the offshore component of the wind was enough to keep light sea conditions and we boogied at 30 kts all the way to Cape Canaveral where the direction of the shoreline turns further towards the west and I was in the full fetch of the N Atlantic as the winds had also clocked a bit to the east. Anyway, made up a few hours later of slogging into 7' seas down to 16kts and made it into St Augustine surfing the boat over the bar and sat there until Sunday morn waiting out the wind. As we ran yesterday into Charleston I started developing a fuel problem so I went to change out all the fuel filters, easy enough. In the process though, I dropped a bolt into the bilge
There is absolutly NO room in the engine room of an '07 61' Viking Sport Cruiser, none. Well, not my first rodeo as they say, so I wedge my body into a space, contorted into a position God never intended the human body to be in, draped over an engine and blindly stuck my hand straight down into the bilge and stubbed my finger on...The Bolt!
"Damn I'm good!!!" and as I retract my hand into view, it is BLACK with oil.
I look at the dipstick, it's a few gallons low. The boat is an 07, it has 680 hrs on it, I've put 620 of those hours on it. It has never lost any oil and the bilges have always been clean. I can see a spot underneath the outside of the engine which sits 4" from a fuel tank. I'm about to go wedge myself in there to find the leak. It's under warranty, but they can't get anyone out till Wednesday,
and considering the working conditions space wise, God only knows how long to fix. Well, that means there's no way anymore that I'll be flying home on thurs to fly up Fri with my bud.Even if I was up and running tomorrow and everything went perfect with weather, I won't make it to Glen Cove till Friday evening. The reality though is that I may be stuck here through this weekend in Charleston, in which case I would be able to go to S-n-F for a day or two (I've had this client for 8 years, he'd have no problem with that), so I'm wondering if anyone around here or further north was day tripping down or doing a single over night that may have a spare seat. I really want to get there so I can heckle the Garmin guy about no Victor Airways 
It's one of my biennial joys in life.
There is absolutly NO room in the engine room of an '07 61' Viking Sport Cruiser, none. Well, not my first rodeo as they say, so I wedge my body into a space, contorted into a position God never intended the human body to be in, draped over an engine and blindly stuck my hand straight down into the bilge and stubbed my finger on...The Bolt! "Damn I'm good!!!" and as I retract my hand into view, it is BLACK with oil. I look at the dipstick, it's a few gallons low. The boat is an 07, it has 680 hrs on it, I've put 620 of those hours on it. It has never lost any oil and the bilges have always been clean. I can see a spot underneath the outside of the engine which sits 4" from a fuel tank. I'm about to go wedge myself in there to find the leak. It's under warranty, but they can't get anyone out till Wednesday, and considering the working conditions space wise, God only knows how long to fix. Well, that means there's no way anymore that I'll be flying home on thurs to fly up Fri with my bud.Even if I was up and running tomorrow and everything went perfect with weather, I won't make it to Glen Cove till Friday evening. The reality though is that I may be stuck here through this weekend in Charleston, in which case I would be able to go to S-n-F for a day or two (I've had this client for 8 years, he'd have no problem with that), so I'm wondering if anyone around here or further north was day tripping down or doing a single over night that may have a spare seat. I really want to get there so I can heckle the Garmin guy about no Victor Airways It's one of my biennial joys in life.