Wel, gn-ze... This one is definately worth the price of admission... And I gotta go back to see what the final odds were on various scenerios to see who the boys in Vegas made out...

Okay, I might not have had the entire story in thinkerator but I can now divulge certain corrections that should be considered... Fiorst of all, seem that my poor brother and the bank that was fiancing the boat weren't seein' eye to eye and so the bank repo'd it about 3 years ago and took it to _________, Md. where the bank, in it's infanite wisdom, just let it sit and sit and while it was sittin' both deisel engines kinda, ahhhhh, locked up from no being run... It's way too convoluted a story, which BTW has nuthin' to do with the events of this pasy weekend, on how my poor brother got it back so we'll just leave that alon... Suffice to say, he did get it back and there it was having been sittin' in a Marina for closew to three years with locked up engines...

Fast forward to the this summer and my poor brother having to drive almost 3 hours to get to the boat... P.B. (poor brother) finally got the engines unlocked afer spending weekend after weekend oiling, pounding, pleadin' the sumabiches to run...

That kinda where "The Trip from Hell" story begins...

So we' got to the boat Friday night with the goal of wirng the "field" side of the two rebuild alternators to "hot" for the trip the following morning... Got the first one wired and got it fired up and accordin' to the voltmeter it wasn't workin'... So we wired the second one hoping that if that alternator worked that we'd be fine if we just didn't run anything much that leeded 'lectricty but...

...that engine wouldn't fire... Bad starter motor... I mean, he swears it had run the last time it ran which was a couple weeks ago but it wouldn't start so we basicly said, "Screw it" 'cause it was late and there wasn't much light down the engine compartment and we hadn't eaten or got drunk yet... I mean, man gotta have his priorties, right???

Next morning I climb down the engine hole and put a box heater on the starter motor and engine to get things warm and left it there fir about hour 'er so before tryin' to crank it... Well, on the 3rd or 4th attempt it fired and that was good... Also good was the alternator on it was workin'... The bad thing was that the internal voltage regulator wasn't so it was chargin' balls to wall...

Then we fired the one that had fired the night before so there we were with two running Cummings deisel engines, one alternator not charging and the other charging too much...

So after alot of head scrtaching and several coin flips we decided, "Ahhhhhh, screw it, let's go" and so go we did...

Now I told ya'll that there was some good stuff and we made it over to the marina that sells fuel and P.B. was prepared to stcik about $300 worth in the two tanks but it only took half that much to fill 'um while we didn't dare shut them engines off... Fols at them marinas don't like ya' to do that but luck had it there was like some high school girl running the marina and I kinda kept her distracted...

So, here we were with two running engines, two full tanks a working bilge pump and a chart of where we ***hoped*** to go...

Well, I have to say that the first half of the trip went as smooth as we could have hoped for... We didn't sink... We didn't get lost... We didn't get arrested,,, The boat didn't get impounded... All in all, things were going real okay...

Well ya'll ever watch a football game where everything goes right in the first half but no so in the second???

(To be continued...)

B~