Question for the Old Salts

No problem as long as you don't mind hurricane season which goes to November 15.

Any time after Christmas is good, just to be sure.

In the 1940's my Grandpa got hit by a Tropical Storm off of Barbados at Christmas time(very rare) but like NYcapt said, mid November onwards is best.

Need some help bringing the boat to the States?

I would say now would be the time to bring it back. Starting November-ish you'll have a lot more days of rougher seas. My favorite time would've been April-July. BUT, just keep an eye out for hurricanes and go. You can always hole up somewhere in the Bahamas, or outrun the storm if a Hurricane is somewhere out in the Atlantic. You can also run most of the banks in the Bahamas and it will be calm regardless once you get north of Long Island. Once you start getting into winter you could be holed up for a week or two at a time waiting on calm seas.

I'm with CaptainJ. At this time, the weather prognosticators see nothing in the way of tropical development for the next week for the entire Atlantic Basin, plus there is a high degree of shear over the GOM + Caribbean.

You have a nice window of opportunity between cold fronts coming down off the CONUS (they just might be a bigger threat to you than any tropical activity) and the winter trades starting to crank up down South.

IMHO, this hurricane season is done.

In my experience polishing the fuel is a waste of time, unless it clogs the fuel filters every 5 hours of running time. Everytime I've had it done, if you didn't run all of the fuel out and use the heck out of the boat right away, within a month it spread back into the new fuel.

Get a product from power service called "Diesel Kleen", put in the shock treatment amount and I've seen the diesel kleen stuff eat the algae out of the racor bowls. Bring a case or two of primary fuel filters and yank one at the end of the day and monitor the condition. Bring plenty of secondaries also. I would change the secondaries every 2nd or third time you change the primaries.

Keep in mind Racor's use the bottom half of the filter element when they are clean, then the fuel level works it's way up the housing and filter as the bottom of the filter gets clogged, so if you take the lid off and there is fuel at the top of the filter, it's time to change......but visually if it looks black, change it.......

Have a safe trip. San Juan PR, Ocean World in Puerta Plata, DR. are good stops there is a great new marina in the turks and caicos about 5 miles away from Seller's Cut in provo and you don't have to risk seller's cut, Long Island is a good stop in Bahamas, (that large marina on great exuma is closed), then you have plenty of stops through the exuma's..... I usually cut through Galliot Cut (north of Long Island) and run the Exuma bank to Nassau.

Hi,

Fuel Polishing to rid your fuel of sediment is one thing which does work well, it is really a fine filtering.

Using the same process to rid your fuel of growth which is what you are likely to have after it has sat down there is a whole other ball game. It achieves the best results when used in conjunction with a biocidal treatment regime and not just done once an then re loaded without any additional treatment.

Polishing your fresh water tanks- Not sure exactly what you mean by this, I would suggest that you just dump the FW and clean out the tanks then refill with fresh water.

???

When I change Racors I top them up before putting the lid back on ... to me this minimizes any air in the system having a chance to make it further downstream.

I prefer having vacuum gauges on the racors to tell me how clogged the filters are getting.

http://www.defender.com/product.jsp?path=-1|311|314195|314585|316461&id=549139

Vac gauges on Racors are a big help but I guess on a boat like this the engines are not too thirsty.

My favourite set-up is double/double Racors. This is where you have a primery course filter then into a medium filter.

For the double/double you now need the same filter set-up with a switch-over valve. So that after a long trip, after the tanks have had a good stir up, you switch over to the new filters just before you enter the marina. At low engine revs the fuel flow is lower and thus the filters will pass less fuel if a bit clogged. This could stop an engine when manouvering if you've got old or cruddie fuel.

With this in mind I have, and I hold my hand up to this and take the blame, blown up a DD92 V8 due to pumping in rubbish fuel. The stuff was aweful and mostly lumps mixed with water. The Racors took the lumps and slime out but the water killed the motors.

Getting the Boss helicoptered off the island for a meeting is a tad embaressing, the waiting 3 days for some fishermen to drop off clean fuel a small hardship, to limp home on one engine, a cow.

When the fuel guys came to clean the tanks, the crud was unbelievable. Water and greeny/silver slime. A lot of flushing with new fuel and a good dose of Grotamar fuel treatment finally got them clean.

Never again.

I top off the filters also. BUT, once the engines are run, the fuel level will drop inside of the racors to about halfway up the filter. If you take out a filter to check it after running for a while, even with the fuel valves shut off, you will lift the lid and NOT see fuel on top of the filter if the filter is not bad. You can then pull the filter up and you'll see the bottom half will be discolored and the top half of the filter clean.......

Vaccuum gauges are a terrific help in staying on top of your filters condition without having to take the lid off of one. I always see what the vaccuum reading is on a fresh filter at cruise speed, then check the vaccuum gauge a couple of times a day......

Can't say you're wrong, because quite frankly that's a new one on me. Theoretically that sounds like you could flip a clogged filter and keep going, but I doubt that's the case. So I've learned something new, but would feel better if I heard more corroboration from engineers. DK why vac gauges aren't standard. They're a real cheap convenience.