Long day - 45-nms from my friend's house and, as it turns out, 45-nms back. Why? He had a bottom job last week and swapped-out props to a pair that was original to the boat but had been damaged 4-years ago and repaired. Turns out they have a moderate vibration so we returned to the yard today. As it turns out, looking at the old paperwork on the damaged props, they were not fully repairable so decided to not haul today. For those curious, props are easily over $5k each.
On an interesting note on fuel economy: On the way to the yard, we did around 2200 RPMs on the Cummins 435hp engines and burned just under 90 gals diesel (according to the electronic monitors on the 2014 Cummins) for 45 nms. About 90% of the running was at 11-1/4 to 11-1/2 kts; 10% was slow-bells for no-wake zones. About 4.5 hours. Roughly 2-gal per nm.
On the way home, slowed to 1650 RPM and around 8-1/4 to 8-1/2 kts and burned under 30 gals diesel - around a third of what we did going 25% faster. Around 0.66 gal per nm. It took roughly an hour longer to go the same 45 nms, but burned about 60-gals less diesel, or almost $250 less for the 1-hour extra time. Why the big delta? Probably because 11-1/2 kts is the worst speed possible for economy.
Long day - 11-hours round trip. For dinner, stopped by a local place on the ICW "Wahoos" in Redington Beach (picture below). They have docks out back that unload locally caught shrimp and fish daily, and ice cold beer - pretty much a locals place. I'm a happy camper - beautful day, I didn't have to pay for fuel, and a great dinner with cold beer to top-off. Florida suits me well.......I don't know why places like Wilwuakee, NYC, and Chicago are not ghost towns.
Peter
