Beginning To Catch You All Up

Monday, 9 December 2013

We departed Kansas City, headed for Grasonville, Maryland to begin the process of moving Maggie Mae to warmer waters.  We arrived at Baltimore Washington Airport and my son, Jason, picked us up and took us to the marina.  The first thing we did was to turn on the heaters as it was cold, cold, cold.  On Tuesday, we began to make the changes/additions to Maggie Mae that would allow her to make the long cruise, i.e. addition of state of the art electronics, fixing a bunch of minor glitches and cleaning.  We continued on Wednesday to fix and update and clean.  Now, for the disclaimer.  We had not, up to this point, driven this boat, and I was relying on the highly paid Surveyors report to determine the seaworthiness of this boat.  For example, he reported that the engines had excessive crankcase blow-by and was leaving a minor oil slick out one of the exhausts.  Thursday, we finalized preparations to move on down the Chesapeake to Portsmouth, Virginia. (across the Elizabeth River from Norfolk).  Friday morning, we fired up the engines and headed across the narrows to fuel up and pump out.  Finishing that project, we headed on down the bay, using just one engine, to minimize fuel use and stop our oil slick.

Preparing to Leave, It is COLD.

Nice Sunny Day For A Cruise



Container Ship coming from Baltimore

We did not go far on this day as we got a late start and the daylight hours are short, we stopped at Mear's Marina in Annapolis, Maryland for the night. Performing our maintenance, we discovered that in running the port engine for three hours, we had disappeared 3 quarts of oil.  Worrisome!

Nice Photo

On Saturday, we departed early and arrived later in the day at Herrington Harbor Marina, a very nice place, but what we would discover, all the other boaters were already in Florida, and most of the marinas that we would stop at were partially shut down for the winter.

Note the ice on deck!

Sunday, 15 December, we continued on down the Bay, stopping for the night at Ingram Bay Marina, once again, nearly deserted.

Light House in Chesapeake Bay

Monday, 16 December, we arrive at Ocean Marine, in Portsmouth, Virginia.  Now began the thinking about our maintenance issues regarding the port engine and its oil usage. 

Arriving at and passing Norfolk Navy Base



Tanker trying to delay us, It did not work.

We decided that maybe the motor was sucking oil through the valve guides, and all we needed to do was have a valve job done on the heads.  So off to my favorite store, Harbor Freight.  We bought a compression tester kit and all of the heavy duty tools needed to pull the heads for a valve job.  Alas, the compression test indicated that we had no leakage past the piston rings or past the valve lips.  Also, the spark plugs had no indication of oil burning, which would have shown up base on the amount of oil we were using.  After much research, we discovered that the engine oil cooler was leaking oil into the raw water stream.  So after a $90.00 oil cooler replacement, we have an engine that uses no oil and the EPA would approve our emissions.
Now, it was back home to Kansas to do some work, enjoy the holidays and buy more stuff.  But wait, the marina where we had bought Maggie Mae called me and said that we had to return two of the fenders that we left the marina with, so, my plan was to deflate the fenders and put them in our large suitcase to take home and reship to Maryland.  We also needed to overhaul the carburetors from the boat so I removed them, drained them and put them in the suticase with the fenders.  On Thursday, 19 December we left for the Norfolk airport with our suitcase.  We checked in and were just past the security screening when I heard Beths' name being paged to report to a airline counter, as there was a problem with her luggage.  (I had cleverly checked the big suitcase under her name)  I checked at the counter and they said we could not have carburetors in our luggage. what to do, what to do? At first they said they would hold the bag till we got back in three weeks, then changed their mind and said they did not have space and we would have to have someone come pick it up.  I explained that there was no one in Norfolk that we knew.  I could see that the bag would soon be in some dumpster.  So, I called out taxi company who provides service to the area marinas and asked if they could come back to the airport, pick up the bag, and take it back to the marina.  They said they would be delighted to accomodate us for a fee.  Well, problem solved, and I chastised Beth for trying such a stunt.