1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit

We cast off early, ran uneventfully and effortlessly on plane most of the time, and made it from Deale, MD to our new home port in 7 hours 45 minutes. The Cummins 6CTA engines performed nearly flawlessly.

After several false starts, my Cummins turbodiesels no light off immediately every time I turn the key.

After a 15-year refit, it was finally time to splash my Roamer. Unfortunately, things didn't go smoothly...yet.

After a dozen test runs on dry land, the starboard Cummins 6CTA started and ran on the second try when we splashed the boat. But then it died and wouldn't restart. We had to pull the boat from the water to deal with that and some other issues.

This is the final test for my Cummins 6CTA engines before launching the boat. I want to make sure they start reliably before putting the boat in the water. Since it's still on land and there's no raw water for cooling the exhaust, I only ran the engines for a few seconds.

I show the entire exterior and interior of my 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46.

After more than a decade sitting fallow while I worked on refitting this boat, I finally got the starboard engine running!

This is the first attempt at starting the Cummins main engines in my Chris Craft Roamer refit project. It doesn't go perfectly, but I'm definitely on the right track.

After realizing I had too much weight on the port side of the boat, I decided to relocate the Fischer Panda Mini 12 genset from the port to the starboard side. That 400 pound shift should help balance out the washer, dryer, and three air conditioners that ended up on the port side of the boat. The battery bank is also outboard on the starboard side because that's where it made the most sense, and by chance it also adds ballast in the right spot. Check out my 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 refit blog at https://1969chriscraftroamer46.wordpress.com/about/

A newborn fawn was wondering around very near my house, far closer than the deer normally come. The mother had gone off into the woods, so I escorted Bambi to the woods for an eventual family reunification.