Day 112 Tuesday
09 September 2014 | Lantana,Fl.
Capt. Vern
Well, I think that our last blog had us in Manatee Pocket with fuel tank problems.Well after much searching and looking,the fact of the matter is that there is a leak somewhere in the bottom of the port fuel tank. The only worst thing that could have happened on the boat is if one of the engines had completely broken down. There is no easy fix to this problem. Carver made the hull of the boat and placed the tanks,wires,engines,etc in it and then place the top of the boat on the hull and joined them together! There is no way to get this tank out even if the engine was removed. For the temp. fix, Rob and I got 35 feet of fuel line and a bunch of connectors and connected the port engine to the starboard tank.So now we are running both engines off the single 140 gallon starboard fuel tank. Seems to be working so far. The only other options that I can think of is to put a rubber bladder tank inside the aluminum tank. The other is to angle grind the tank out in pieces and replace it with two or three smaller tanks joined together. Either one of those will most likely result in a loss of fuel capacity. So the upcoming few months will be interesting to say the least. Oh, there is one last option. Sell the boat! But the problem with that is finding someone to buy a boat with a bad fuel tank,unless you almost give it away,so I guess we are stuck with one of the first two. Besides the fuel tank issue,we had a great visit in Stuart with Norman and his beautiful wife Barbara, and ugly Lobster Bob. We always enjoy our visits to Stuart. If we stay on schedule, we should arrive in Marathon on Saturday. That is when this cruise will officially end. Havent had time for pictures so that will have to be later.................