The Flight of M/V DRAGONFLY

Well, it is time to bring her back to the Chesapeake Bay and home in Shady Side, MD. The first journey took us out the Neuse river, north through Goose Creek, across the Pamlico River, up the Pungo River and into Belhaven. We actually went a bit past Belhaven and stopped at the Dowry Creek Marina, which was very nice. For the journey, it was me accompanied by Scott Guess as my captain.

Well, just a few minutes into this trip and we noticed the tachometer wasn’t working at either helm! Oh crap. What to do. Do we turn back and call a mechanic ? Scott quickly determined that the alternator was charging, just not providing voltage to set the tachometer. We decided to continue on and debug the tach as we went.

The Neuse was somewhat windy with about 12 knots from the southeast and 2 footers at about 3 seconds.

Once we got off the Neuse, the ride calmed down considerably.

However, the Neuse still had roughed up the salon. This is what it looked like when we finally docked!

We investigated the tach issue. We found this:

It seemed like the smoking gun….more on this wire later.