I appreciate the responses from everyone. Based on the posts, I went ahead & switched the feeding tank from main tank to flank tanks, ran the engines in an effort to rule-in the fuel lines from the main tank as the culprit. The gauges showed the same high readings. This does not rule-out the fuel lines from the tanks but makes them less likely.
There is a common fuel hose that goes to the racors. I checked those 2 hoses and they look fine to the naked eye for what its worth. I will see if I can get the 3-needle gauges that RickyD describes. I think they can be diagnostically useful.
One off the wall observation. Last year with all the disruptions & lockdowns I had Caterpillar perform all the yearly maintenance for simplicity. The gauges read appropriately. However, when I took out the old racors yesterday, I noticed that the top 1.5” or so of the filters were dry and fuel had not reached all the way up the filters. I assume that they did not filled the canister fully. But it begs the question, could the small space without fuel reduced the recorded vacuum on the gauges after last year’s service?? When I changed the racors, I filled the canisters all the way up leading to a but of overflow when tightening the gauges, making sure no air is trapped..thus influencing the reading bs last year. Just speculating of course.
Next step is to take off the common lines leading to the racors and examining them carefully. Then take the boat out and push the rpms and see what happens to the readings.
A simple 30min maintenance task is turning into a multi-day project. Frustrating but still fun to be on the boat for now.
Thanks