It has been a whirlwind of activity since I arrived back home on Friday. Tom and Scott had a successful sea trial of the engine on Thursday. On Saturday morning Tom proudly showed me the install which he has every right to be proud of - he and Scott did a very neat job. Only problem was.... we couldn't get the damn thing to start!!*#!!! It appeared that air was getting into the system somehow and despite multiple attempts at bleeding, the engine would stall after running about 30 seconds. So, we called Scott back in again , he bled the engine, started it and it ran fine. Wonderful! The next morning, we were up early planning on an extended motorcruise around the Bay to get some hours on the engine - NOT. Once again we could not get the bloody thing to run. By now Tom and I are convinced we have a air leak at the new Racor fuel filter assembly. Scott came back this morning, bypassed the filter assembly and all was well again. At this point we threw off the lines and headed out for a couple of hours - Boy! was it good to be out on the water again after all this time. We had to get back in after a couple of hours as Tom had to go to work driving the launch. As we slowly approached our slip - we ran aground - Yikes!! We have never done that before - but it was dead low tide and a spring tide at that. I wanted to call the yard guys to come get us off but Tom was afraid they would laugh at us and I had to admit he had a point. Next thing we knew our buddy, Tom pulled up in his dinghy commenting that we had chosen a strange place to park. But Tom is our hero because he managed to pull us off without too much fuss. Turns out the yard guys had all observed us stuck and assumed it was someone else - known for such antics and with a similar boat to us. Once they found out it was us their ribbing was merciless. I am secretly pleased that we have our first grounding of the season "out of the way" and that Tom was at the helm.

Now the biggest test will be - can we get the engine started tomorrow? Stay tuned.