Is departing on Saturday the 13th a wise move? A bit of a haze, but a calm Long Island Sound once we got there. Picking up our speed to 15 knots, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP from one of our engines! Our first thought was something caught on a prop, so we made our way to a nearby harbor in Long Island to dive down & take a look. Nope – nothing caught, bent or suspicious… Our next thought was the damper plate on a transmission, or ??? Not willing to turn around back to Deep River, we continued onward as we could still proceed at up-to 10 knots with whatever this problem was.

A restored commuter yacht or just a classic day-cruise yacht?

Once to NYC, we knew we couldn’t make it our usual 115nm offshore directly to Cape May in daylight going only 9 – 10 knots, so we booked the marina in Atlantic City as several days of windy weather was forecast.

Not quite as glamorous up close – the marina & casinos were built in the ’80’s.

Once the winds & rains relented we headed out again offshore the rest of the way to Cape May. Like magic, no more strange noises at high speed! Up the Delaware, across the C & D Canal & began down the Chesapeake, when suddenly the noise came back accompanied by a VERY LOUD ALARM!

What the heck does PRIMARY SOLENOID FAILURE – PORT PCU mean? A Goggle search told us the PCU was our electronic “powertrain control unit” & being hydraulic transmissions, each transmission has 2 solenoids – “primary” for forward & “secondary” for reverse. Why the heck couldn’t this alarm have gone off days ago? Now I could zero in on the exact problem. Either the wiring or the solenoid itself was bad, so I started with the wire connectors. They were quite corroded, being down in the bilge near the shaft. I cut off the special Volvo Penta connector, cleaned up the corrosion & installed ordinary connectors as a temporary test. There is a very good chance the THUMPING was the solenoid momentarily kicking on/off due to the poor connection. The next couple hundred miles will tell…

But first … Imelda & Humberto (this was an early model before they performed their fortunate sharp turns away from the U.S.).

We were about 1/2 way down the Chesapeake (around 80 miles from the Atlantic) – far enough away with dozens of creeks to hide out in. The next day, it looked like both storms were staying south, so we decided to push down to Hampton (otherwise we would have been “stuck” waiting up in the Chesapeake for nearly a week with high easternly winds, even after the storms went by).

There is an unremarkable creek in downtown Hampton, VA between bridges & protected by tall buildings we knew we’d be o.k. anchoring in. Other boaters were panicking, so the marinas we checked with were all booked up, plus sitting at an expensive marina for 4 – 6 days could hit nearly $1,000. Wanting to have enough drinking water & to top off our diesel tanks, we stopped at the Safe Harbor Bluewater Marina. As we pumped the last of their diesel (their low-level alarm was going off, but still 2′ of diesel to go), we asked for perhaps their last boat slip too? No, sorry – all slips are booked solid … all we have is this fixed dock out back:

Darn, it’s behind all of their fancier floating slips, so more protected. Oh, because you’re a Safe Harbor Marina customer, it’s free for 3-days! Oh, with your Safe Harbor membership the diesel was only $2.99/gallon!  Happy Us!!

With the sharp turn East of both hurricanes back out into the Atlantic, we’re expecting winds gusting only to around 30 knots with a few rain showers. The minimal rain will help greatly with our next leg on Thursday, as the upcoming bridges & the Great Bridge Lock often shut down if too much rain due to flooding. Things are certainly looking up!