MD11-c

Well my delivery went well and turned out to be a bit of an adventure. Here is a picture the owner took of me as I was leaving the slip in Rock Hall.

The first few days went flawlessly. The weather was wonderful the entire trip. I spent my first day in the Sassafras river in the Chesapeake. The following day I transited the C&D canal and sailed down the Delaware bay with the morning tide. With full sail up, and the tide I managed 9.5 knots for a few hours, it was really fun. I spent the following night in Cape May NJ. I was up and out the following morning with the first sun. I had a beautiful day sailing to Atlantic City. My alternator quit and pulled into a slip so I could charge up for the following days voyage. I left Atlantic cit early for Manasquan NJ. A few hours into my trip I was motor sailing along and the Motor sputtered to a quit. “AHHHHH”, All the frustration I had with my Volvo MD11-c came back. This particular motor had a complete rebuild in 2005 and looked and ran like new. Well a seal failed and I lost compression. I called sea tow and got a ride into Manasquan. I called the owner and he decided to come down for the last day of the trip. We had a nice dinner and got the motor running again. We felt it would last us to Jersey City which was only a 40 mile trip.

We left the next morning and could only run the motor at about 1100 rpm’s. With light wind and a little motor we managed 4-5 knots, it was a beautiful day and we had a nice sail.

I had timed the tide at Sandy hook to bring us up to jersey city, but it seemed the low-tide never came and we fought a current the entire way from Sandy hook to Jersey city. I still cant figure that one out. “Our time” chugged up the river under the varazzano bridge and past the statue of Liberty. We turned into our canal and the owner (Mark) throttled back a bit. Well the RPM’s just continued to decrease until the motor died and we were adrift in the canal with no wind or motor. There are two very busy ferry terminals there and seatow never answered the VHF. I dropped the hook and set the anchor before we hit the rocks. Ferries were blasting by at 20 knots in the dark throwing large wakes. It wasn’t the best situation. Mark and I managed to get the dink in the water in about 4 seconds and get the outboard on the back. We tied the dink fore and aft on the port side, started the motor, and were under way quickly. We were in the slip 10 minutes later, laughing about the whole thing. We tied up the boat and took a train to the city for wings and beer.

This delivery was demanding at times (no auto pilot, cold nights, and electrical and motor problems) but most importantly I feel like I made a new fried. Mark and I hit it off and I hope we keep in touch.

The following morning Sam and Guin picked me up and we spent the day in Manhattan. We took Guin to the Central Park zoo and had a beautiful day. It’s good to be back with my girls.

I’ll be heading back to Jacksonville in a few days. First and most importantly Sam is meeting her birth Father for the first time tonight, kind of cool! We are both looking forward to it.

Peace everyone.

Another successful delivery!

– Alex