Third time’s the charm! 

.....Well, sort of.

Morning Dance ran into a few problems during the installation process with the heights of exhaust hoses in conjunction with her waterline…… she ended up flooding her engine full of salt water the first time we heeled her over while sailing and Harold had to have it rebuilt / fire the old mechanics / hire a new set of mechanics that got her up and running within two days of getting the engine back. It took quite a few weeks, and a few oil changes, but Morning Dance is up and running and in full charter mode with a brand new engine and freshly redone interior!

Harold, and the mechanics working to lower the new engine into the boat.

Harold helping to guide the new engine back onboard.

Cooper helping?? Not really...

View from our 2 hour test run throughout Miami.

New Engine!!

Goodbye broken generator and old engine!!

Empty Engine Room

Removing the old exhaust to make room for the new, bigger one.

So proud...I cut out the hole for the new engine panel!!

The new panel in.

____________________________________________

What projects on the boat look like...

____________________________________________



We are glad to be ‘home’ and back on Morning Dance. She still has a lot of cleaning and little tweaks that need adjusted here and there, but she will be up and better than before in just a few days!!!

The next few weeks will be exciting for us, as we must run her at a higher cruising speed than normal to help ‘break in’ the new engine (6 knots here we come!!).

Cooper checking out the new, painted engine room.

"helping" with engine checks.... sort of.

Our "relaxing" delivery of S/V Morning Dance, from her haul-out in Manatee Bay in Key Largo to our anchorage in Miami, planned out for our weekend before going home for the holidays...

We had left late - around 4pm - from Manatee Bay waiting on High Tide to clear their channel and had made it up to Pumpkin Key shortly after dark. In the morning we left early - around 5am- to hopefully make it back to Miami in time to pick up my car which as still in the Manatee Bay Marina Parking lot.Once we cleared featherbed channel we heard a loud bang and our engine came to a sudden hault..... at first we thought it may have been a lobster pot (super tangled up in the prop) but after further investigating and trying to crank over the engine found out it as not the case.

Luckliy we were already motor sailing and were able to continue on our path North until we were close enough for Harold and Margie to come out and tow us with S/V Island Dreamer before it became dark back to the anchorage.

We believe that it was just the engine's time to go and that a rod had broke loose on our journey North..... watch for posts on her new engine and on pictures of us working on getting the old one out and hauled away! Until that time however we will be doing charters on S/V Island Dreamer and living inbetween trips on S/V Morning Dance.