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[Split Decision]

Left Mac's marina Friday morning at 6:15 to head to Oregon Inlet. We were worried about the conditions since it was blowing hard most of the day on Thursday. To our surprise we woke up to no wind. Refuled at Pirates Cove and were on our way by 9:00 to head out the inlet. The Inlet was flat so we had no problems. What a relief since it was so bad the week before with the NE they had for a week straight.

Cranked it up to 26kts and punched Cape May into the plotter and headed north. It showed 204 nm. After a few hours the wind kicked up from the SE with a NE swell. Had to back down to 21-23kts for the rest of the trip. Eventually it went to 6' with some 8's in the mix but never had to go below 21kts. About 4 hours into the ocean run the alarms went off for the engine. It showed a water in fuel alarm. Shut everything down and drained the filters and were off again. We eventually had 5 more water alarms on the trip.Not fun in 6-8' seas. My guess is that we got the water on the refuel in pirates cove.

Made it to just north of Cape May but we were running low on fuel (hoped to make it to Atlantic City) about 8PM so we went back to overnight in Cape May. Woke up to a 20kt SSE wind and 6-8' seas building to 11' so we decided to take it easy and run up the ICW. We made it back home and tied it up about 4PM.

All in all it was a great trip aside from the water in fuel problem. The boat worked far better than expected. The Cummins QSB 380s are unbelieveable. Very quiet and plenty of power.

I will post more in the coming week.

I just have to say that Mac, his sons Wade and Keith, and their entire crew went far beyond what I thought they should have. (More on this in future posts).

Thanks Mac

Here is one pic for now. When I start to resize them, I will post some more. This truely was the trip of a lifetime.

[Capt B]

Welcome back, sorry to hear about the fuel problems, but I guess the boat handled the weather well.

[Wolakrab]

Glad you made it...beautiful boat, by the way. Sorry you had some problems, but at least it was minor and easily remedied!

[Split Decision]

Here are a few more pics of the boat

[backman]

Pretty boat

The side by sides to the 28 and 35 are telling. I now see why the 32 is so much bigger than the 28. I'm now officially jealous!

The tractor trip down the dirt road behind the airport and all that mass unsecured to the trailer on the ramp had me scared stiff!

[CClassic28]

Tom,

First, congrats on the boat, she's a beauty!! Sorry to hear you had a rough ride home.

I can't believe the size difference of the 28 next to the 32, I am now even more jealuos than before if that could be possible.

How did all of your rigging work out? Where all the cables and wires easily snaked thru the hardtop and aluminum? I know when I have added electronics to my boat, snaking wires has been real tough.


Good luck and tight lines!!


Regards,

Chris

[Little Dandy]

Nice boat and thanks for sharing the pictures. Must have been an exciting day.

[Split Decision]

Chris

Snaking wires was a piece of cake. The only one that gave us trouble was the gyro compass wire that we had to run from the V-birth to the helm. There is wire chases in the hard top which had plenty of room and a direct route to the tower leg. There are tubes that run along the engine room under the gunnel for wires and easy access to the upper electronics box through the tower legs. Also tubes that run aft above the main fuel tank for the rudder feed back. Mac puts pull strings in all of the tubes for easy pulling of wires.

When we first spoke to Mac on Monday morning he told us that the freezer boxes lost their charge and that he had a refridgeration guy comming to check it out. He showed up on Wednesday at 3 pm and could not pull a vacuum on the system. Well long story short, we worked on them untill 7:30 that night and thought we had it fixed. Had it working and got the boxes down to 35 deg.

This is the night that Mac took all 5 of us out to dinner on him and we had the best time talking about boats and fishing. He really is the best.

We put the boat in the water and started checking out all the systems and found the boxes lost their charge again. Mac drove with my friend who is a AC and Refridgeration guy to Elizabeth City to buy all the guages and freon which was a 45 min drive each way so we could get this thing fixed. It turned out to be a bad valve on the compressor.

So far all is well with the boxes.

That night Mac lent us his truck so we could go out to dinner. He said just leave it at his marina and he would get it in the morning.

I can not say enough about the hospitality we all recieved from Mac, his sons Wade and Kieth and the whole crew at Carolina Classic. He gave us free reign of the factory if we needed anything. We even used the bandsaw to cut some wood and they changed the blade first.

After spending almost a week with them I can't say enough about them.

Thank you Mac, Wade and Kieth for a great experience.

[Split Decision]

Re: Pretty boat

[quote="backman"]The side by sides to the 28 and 35 are telling. I now see why the 32 is so much bigger than the 28. I'm now officially jealous!

Larry, when I was tied up next to Mac's 35 I measured the cockpit. Fore and aft they were the same at 7'. Port to starboard the 32 is 9'2" and the 35 is 9'6". All measurements are inside the bolsters.

[CClassic28]

Tom,

I am happy to hear you had an easy time rigging.

The problem I encountered was the tower legs were so jammed up with hydraulic lines for throttle controls, steering controls, AC wiring for spreader lights and many more DC wires and coax cables.

I had to cut the end plug off my transducer in order to snake it thru the leg. I was very uneasy about cutting it but it is performing fine.

Are you planning a Mack run for the weekend or have they already passed you by?



Chris

[TwinFin]

tower legs

Chris:

I don't know what year your 28 is but I had the same problem when I added a tower to my 2004 28 last year. I wound up adding a 3" diameter stanchion that runs from my electronics box under the hardtop down to the helm station. I routed my tower control hydraulics for the throttles, gears and steering through there since the tower legs would have been real tight.

Keith told me that they went to larger diameter tubing not too long after my boat was built because a lot of customers had wrestled with the narrow routing paths.

Split Decision: Your 32 sure is nice. I'm counted amongst the jealous.