All in all, we spent exactly seven weeks in Fort Myers Beach from January 27th to March 18th. We’d planned on getting out of there within a few days, but that engine just wouldn’t let us go. In that time we met some of the most hospitable and fantastic people we could ever hope to meet, had an insane amount of fun at one of the USA’s Trashiest Spring Break destinations, and learned everything there is to know about living on a mooring ball in Fort Myers Beach.

(Its always nice seeing someone else run aground as bad as we were in Venice… I guess it really happens to everyone eventually)

But more on that later. First, lets deal with this engine. New water pumps were going for $750+ and I was fed up with it. So after a solid week or so of Happy-Hour driven soul-searching and advice-getting on what the hell to do about this black hole of an engine compartment, I finally decided to repower. That old 3QM had been pushing Contigo for decades and it was time we modernized the power plant.

Enter Matto’s Marine Supply and Captain Joe Hanko. Matto’s is the local Yanmar dealer and they highly recommended Capt. Joe and his Yanmar Certified company Restless Sailor for the installation. A nearby boatyard called Gulf Ways Marine was the chosen work site, which worked out perfectly since we were going to have to push the 25,000 lb sailing fortress with the little 6hp Tohatsu dinghy motor. For whatever reason, they don’t allow engine swaps without a costly haul out which I thought that was ridiculous. As soon as I saw the bottom growth and cracking paint, though, I figured it was as good a time as any to get the work done.

The good people at Gulf Marine yanked Contigo out of the water, and while they stripped down the old bottom paint in preparation for the new coat, the impressively efficient Capt. Joe got to work swapping that engine.

One thing to keep in mind is how far diesel engineering has come over the last 35 years. That old Yanmar weighed in the neighborhood of six hundred pounds at least, and when Joe said we were going to hoist that old motor out with the boom I almost didn’t believe him. Believe it or not, it worked.

While we worked on getting that engine set up, Chip and Dougie and the gang at Gulf Ways threw on a couple coats of a handsome custom blue bottom paint.

Captain Sonny Hill, the sailing veteran I bought Contigo from, established a tradition of painting Greek trireme style reef-god eyes on the keel whenever he got a new bottom job. I had to keep it going, but I’m nowhere near as good an artist…

(I think it ended up looking more like a puffer fish than an eye…. damn)

After three days on the hard getting all this work done, Dougie jumped back in the travel-lift and dunked Contigo back in the water…

Other than the obvious factor of continually having to dump money into this engine, which is a factor that really really really sucks, its hard to complain too much about being stuck in Fort Myers Beach for Spring Break. And now we’ve got a new motor… time to get back to the party. If you don’t like bikinis, booty shaking contests, and drunk college kids by the thousands, don’t read the next entry… coming within the next day or so… ish…