The upgrade was not without blood letting and multiple trips under the boat … but by golly we have new throttles. They are sweet! A big part of the process was learning how the new throttle box works and getting it set up right. The motors idle great, when I drop them in gear they don’t die now… how good is that!
Getting the spacer and new throttle holes drilled was a chore. I dry fitted everything so it would be nice and straight when I glued it down. The spacer is mated to the boat using 3M 5200 and screwed down on all 4 corners. The blood letting came trying to get the box to square up in the hole. The jab saw caught me once on the finger trying to get the fiberglass corners clearanced under the spacer. No biggie.. no band-aids… just a paper towel dab and it’s all good.
So….. I am a functioning boat again. I can actually leave the marina without fear of dock rash. Tomorrow I’ll either start on the new head install or begin the wash down…. I suspect the washdown will be next. Removing bird droppings and cleaning up my work site (the aft cockpit) will make SYL look sporty again.
We have some new freinds – A nice couple (John and Carol) from St. Louis just arrived in Brunswick and tied up to dock 5. They introduced themselves today…. they are on a brand new Catalina. Their intent is to head South about the same time as SYL so we may have a buddy boat down the ICW toward the Keys.
I’m very pleased about my progress and Linda is accomplishing as much on the household. I feel we are ahead of the curve on our quest to motor South. By Monday we should be ready to go, thats about a week ahead of my original departure date. Our new freinds will probably give us a ride for final provisioning. We could go with what we have now, but one more trip would fill in some blanks that would make life more fun.
OH, by the way I turned on our “SPOT” tracker today so if you click on “where is SYL” on the right side of the page then zoom out about 5 clicks you’ll see where SYL is located.
Sea Yawl Later !! Rusty