Summer ends for us when my feet first get cold & I am forced to dig out our portable space heater once the nighttime temp hits 50. Time to go!

Summer has gone by much too quickly, as it usually does. This summer has been partially consumed by troubleshooting an air-in-the-diesel line problem which I discovered early March during our trip north. Usually, having 2 of everything helps troubleshoot boat troubles, but in this case both engines had the same problem, even though separate fuel tanks & systems. Hoses & fittings replaced, filters re-built & tested, various bypasses tested, pressure testing, etc., etc. Pretty sure Lori was getting tired of all the test runs, as most took longer to unhook & re-hook than to go the 2 miles.

As our fuel tanks are almost 3′ below our engines & 10′ away, out of desperation, I temporarily installed a fuel pump in the line to an engine as a test, which resulted in no air getting to the filters & engine – yea! I then came across diesel lift pumps which are designed for my exact issue, particularly with remote gensets & reefers (up on refrigerated containers) which need a little fuel “lift”. My “virtual” mechanic in Florida (my lifeline), says they shouldn’t be necessary for our engines, but the very slight positive fuel pressure won’t hurt anything either.

Looks like an added fuel lift pump for each engine will be our answer – so far so good – no more air getting into any of the engine filters or engines. It’s been a long, head-scratching 5 months.

A Deep River morning as the sun begins to burn off the fog. A neighboring boat here on a mooring came up with an appropriate saying, “A different movie every morning & night” – how true!

The Old Lyme Amtrak bridge is finally being replaced after 118 years. Ohhh…could you please make the new bridge a few inches higher as we barely squeak under at high tide?

Between our fuel line issues & our muffler repairs, we unfortunately didn’t get out to do much local cruising, although we did make it out to a few favorites including Mystic, CT along with Greenport & Sag Harbor, NY.

The S & P Oyster House in Mystic has been our go-to restaurant in Mystic for about 28 years, usually arriving by whichever boat we had at the time. Always a great meal with a view! The famous, historical Mystic River Bascule Bridge (just to the left) with its hourly opening “shows” where all of the tourists gawk, point, photograph & video.

Lunch at Claudio’s Restaurant in Greenport has been the spot to people watch (for me) for even longer – over 55 years I figure. However … the boats (now yachts) have gotten a little bigger since coming here as a little kid.

Coecles Harbor (on Shelter Island, Long Island) was my parents’ favorite anchorage for good reason.

Sag Harbor (the Hamptons) is a magnet for the rich & famous. Our favorite restaurant over the years (Dockside) is now a more fancy-like restaurant. While still great food, $24.00 for a cocktail?! Although … local little neck clams garnished with crab meat in bucatini pasta – yum!

Billy Joel’s famous Downeaster ALEXA. She’s a classic lobster/swordfish type of boat he helped design & had built years ago. It is said his song was named after this boat, which in turn was named after his daughter Alexa Ray Joe.  Out of his dozen-plus boats over the years, this is said to be his favorite.

Newport may have the most extensive luxury sailboats in the northeast, but Sag Harbor wins out with the most extravagant motor yachts of every description, from classic to modern.

Labor Day weekend brought us driving up north to Burlington, VT to celebrate Benj’s birthday. For one of our dinners – sunset on the Lake Champlain waterfront (of course).

Unlike last year departing CT early September for a haul-out in the Chesapeake, this year we’re good. However … it does begin to get cold at night, a tropical storm could eventually show up & we don’t want to get stuck in the East River (like 2 years ago when the Coast Guard completely closed the East River for an extended time when the UN was in session). So, by mid-September is our target. Finishing projects, final visits with friends & family, along with stocking up is our plan.

It’s certainly been a busy first half of summer beginning with major projects, working down to our lists of smaller projects, dental fun, along with visiting family, friends, Benj driving down for a long weekend, driving up to visit with him in Vermont along with a driving trip to upstate New York to visit some of Lori’s relatives.

This is pretty much how all of our boats have looked like once arriving in Connecticut as we begin our projects.

The view out our stern can be beautiful …

or quite stormy!

Replacing our anchor chain used-to-be a once/5-year task, but the poor galvanization now used makes it rust up after only 2 years. One example of “saving the planet” actually making it worse as more to buy & discard. Many boaters would have their chain re-galvanized 2 – 3 times (making it last 10+ years), however the process is now deemed to be too polluting… The galvanization on our new chain is so thin that much of it is already scratched off so beginning to rust already 😦

Even though the previously owner had recently installed new foam in the salon cushions, it was too soft so we installed the densest foam we could find which is now perfect.

These are pieces of our stainless-steel engine mufflers which had corroded thru in places. It’s difficult to find a good welder for stainless steel work who can fit in small jobs. Fortunately our nephew Matt knows a guy who knows a guy – he did a fantastic job!

With our push to eat healthier, we have become addicted to the “Yuka” app which scores most foods with an overall health score. It is eye opening to see how food companies go out of their way to make food enticing, rather than healthy. These “Honey Roasted Walnut Pieces” should be very healthy, but with all of the crap they do to them their score is only 1 out of 100! A similar bag next to these scored at 84. Not only does the app “score” the nutrition label, it also subtracts out for high calories & harmful additives. While the software may not be perfect, it does give you a very good idea, at a glance, of  healthiness … or not.  We highly recommend the “Yuka” app! Your item gets a bad score? No worries, “Yuka” makes recommendations. 🙂

We weren’t sure if we’d ever see us in this boating magazine, as it’s been 2 years since the editor of SAIL magazine called us one day wanting to interview us for a special multihull issue (which has apparently morphed into “Multihull Power & Sail” magazine). We had just a day to clean-up our messy project boat for a quick photo shoot. All went well, then our article got bumped into a future issue we never learned of, so we pretty much forgot all about it. (and hey, it’s not our first magazine appearance!)

Last month I got wondering but found out the publishing company had been bought, with prior issues likely thrown out as they moved offices across the country. Fortunately, the current Managing Editor was nice enough to make us a PDF of our article. If you’d like to view the entire article, here’s the link: Click here for full magazine article  Our thanks to Lydia Mullan of Firecrown Media Group who kindly provided this PDF & of course to Mike Smith who wrote the article.

With our projects now mostly complete, we’re looking forward to some local cruising to Long Island, Mystic & Cuttyhunk. People at our marina (those who don’t know us) likely wonder why our boat seems to just sit at our slip most of the summer – unknowing this is our break & project time after cruising over 3,000 miles the rest of the year.

It will be fun to explore our old cruising grounds, while testing the work (engines, heading sensor, genset, anchor chain) we’ve performed. As Captain Ron (Kurt Russell) says in the Captain Ron movie, “The best way to find out is to get her out on the ocean. If anything’s gonna happen, it’s gonna happen out there.” (it’s much funnier when Captain Ron says it in the movie) 🙂