Last weekend, we decided to take advantage of some gorgeous Florida winter weather and the Presidents’ Day holiday (Corey was out of school for 2 days) and get off the dock for some cruising. My youngest nephew, Ryan, joined us as well since older brother Jack spent his weekend in Bradenton with their Mom for a baseball tournament. Our original plan was to head to Cayo Costa for a quick one-night stay and then on to Don Pedro Island which is about an hour north of Cayo Costa. We’d been wanting to check out Don Pedro but knew we would need a holiday weekend in order to do so since the trip would be about 6 hours.

Once we were off the dock and heading under the Matanzas Bridge, our low oil pressure alarm started going off. We’ve had issues in the past with it being faulty because of a broken wire but this time we had no idea what the issue could be. Since Randy was concerned about it, we anchored near Bunche Beach so he could take a look at it. After deciding he would need more time to figure things out, we decided to stay the night at Bunche Beach and let the boys off the boat to go kayaking to the beach.

The next morning, Randy was still perplexed to why our engine was reading low pressure and we knew we wouldn’t be making it to Cayo Costa or Don Pedro. We decided to pull anchor and cruise about 2 hours south to New Pass, one of our favorite local anchoring spots. The weather was GORGEOUS! The Gulf was flat-calm so we decided to anchor right off of Lovers Key outside the pass. The boys went to shore in the kayaks and spent the day at the beach. Randy continued to trouble-shoot the issue without any luck. After many hours trying to figure it out, he decided not to worry about it until we got back to the dock.  That evening, we were rewarded with the most amazing sunset so we decided to have dinner on the bridge and enjoy the sun melting into the Gulf of Mexico.

Overall, it was a lovely weekend with perfect temperatures: warm low 80’s and sunshine during the day and 50-60’s at night. The boys seemed to have a great time being out on the kayaks and beach on their own and they were expectedly exhausted in the evenings. Once we returned home to our dock, Randy decided to try a heavier weight oil in the engine as recommended by my father. He did an oil change and started the engine up. The alarm didn’t sound this time and the oil pressure reading was right on the mark. Randy thinks we may have fixed the issue and this is because of possibly a couple of things: the heavier weight oil and he read in the diesel forums (which we are now a member of) that overfilling your oil can cause low oil pressure. Whew! We sure hope that we have it fixed since we are already iching to get off the dock again.