West Marine called at 11 to say our parts were in. At 11:15 we were on the bus, having packed up our stuff and Fuzzy and dinghied in to shore. At 11:45 we were back on the bus with parts in hand. Our hope was to install them, test the engine and take off in time to get to Fort Pierce by the end of the day. The parts were installed by 1:30 PM. We primed the Racor and started the engine. Bubbles, lots of bubbles.

In desperation we disconnected the fuel line from the tank and stuffed it in one of our jerry cans of diesel. Prime the Racor again, no bubbles! It was the new fuel pick-ups we’d just had installed. So we uninstalled those, put our old parts back on, replaced the fuel line from the tank to the manifold since it had been pulled on and off so many times the ends were ragged, primed the Racor, no bubbles. Repeat for other pick-up, same result.

We took the boat out for a sea trial, again. No bubbles until we opened it up in the ICW, then the same old bubbles we’ve had all along, but the engine ran without a skip. I’m not sure why it felt somewhat like a triumph to be back where we were, but it did.

Anyway, there’s a good weather window through Sunday, so tomorrow we are going. We’ll go back to our old routine of topping off the Racor every day. At least now we can do it with the fuel pump. I guess that was worth the extra 5 days and $300. Hah!

So I swear, this is the last sunset we’ll see this year in Vero Beach.