Engine Failure!

I ended up spending yesterday at anchor because I had received a call from my son, Alek, saying that he wanted to visit me before I got any further north. He was planning to come after he got off school in Orlando, so we’d have supper together. I used the day to go into town to get some spare bolts for the anchor roller and check out restaurants and catch up on sleep after the overnight offshore passage. We had a great visit, and he drove back to Orlando that night.

Today’s plan was to weigh anchor from my Daytona Beach anchorage around 6:00 am in order to make it the entire 44 nm to the St. Augustine Municipal Marina by the 4 pm slack tide. (The tidal currents are supposed to make docking in that marina challenging, so it is recommended to arrive or depart at slack tide.) I had just weighed anchor and secured all the ground tackle for the trip north. Everything was going smoothly until I got into the channel, turned north, and increased the throttle to cruise rpm at which point the engine started surging and then just quit.

I was almost beyond the bounds of the small anchorage I had just left, so didn’t have time to troubleshoot the engine but instead immediately turned back into the anchorage and used the boat’s momentum to aim for the only spot I’d be able to reach–right in between two other boats. It was a real scramble to run up to the bow to unsecure all the ground tackle and drop the anchor before I drifted into the boats or overshot the anchorage and ran aground.

As it was, I was only able to let out 20′ of chain out before thankfully coming to a stop about 25 feet away from a motor catamaran. I knew I would have to persuade them to move because I was eventually going to have to pay out more scope*¹, but it was 6 am and I didn’t want to wake them, especially as the winds were calm. That could take care of itself later.

It ended up being a long day with many phone calls to friends and family more knowledgeable than me. My son, Nicholay, is always my #1 go-to because of his extensive knowledge of boats, but I tried to limit my calls to him because today is the day he and Sierra are launching themselves on his boat, Mexicana, from DIYC to Guatamala for the season, and he was no doubt very busy. I also called Compton Williams, the retired diesel mechanic at DIYC, and others.

Everyone seemed to agree it was a fuel issue, so the obvious thing to do was check/change the fuel filters which I did even though I had just changed the primary prior to departure. The primary was a bit dirty–not real bad, but not clean, either.

I couldn’t really tell about the secondary. Changing the secondary filter causes the fuel prime in the engine to be lost, so the next step was the bleed the engine to get all the air out to then see if it would start. If so, it would indicate that the dirty fuel filters had starved the engine of fuel.

However, I could not bleed the engine using the little manual lever on the lift pump. It seemed from all my personal sources and the Internet that the solution was to purchase and install an electric priming pump. It was obvious that no more troubleshooting could be accomplished until that was done, so that would be tomorrow’s task: Going back ashore in the paddleboard to find one of these pumps and all the associated hardware to mount it on the boat.

At some point in the midst of all this, I heard a boat horn sound close by and so went up on deck. It was the skipper of the motor catamaran looking a bit upset at how close I was to him. I got him on the radio and explained the situation and he and his wife graciously move their boat further down the anchorage. Then I was finally able to let out more scope. Due to the fact that I didn’t have an engine to help me should I drag anchor for some reason, I decided to let out 7:1 scope just to be sure. I felt a little bit more secure after that.

In the meantime, I started thinking about contingencies. With my almost zero knowledge and experience with diesel engines (especially a 44-year-old one!) I had little faith that I’d be able to get it started again.

This engine has always intimidated me. The whole boat and all its systems had initially intimidated me, but over the last three years I had learned how to change out sails and running rigging, change chainplates and adjust standing rigging, modify all my ground tackle, plumb a number of components, deal with refrigeration, did fiberglass work, and a ton of electrical stuff. Basically, I was now comfortable with pretty much everything on the boat…except this mysterious diesel contraption. In fact, my worst fear when setting out on this journey was that the engine would quit on me and I would have no idea how to fix it. And this is exactly what had happened on day 13. I was pretty stressed out.

So assuming that I would not be able to get it started, I figured I would have to get it towed to a marina where a diesel mechanic could work on it. As I still had some time left in the day, but not enough to go ashore, I thought it would ease my stress level to arrange all that in case my own efforts proved fruitless. (But doing so ended up having just the opposite effect!)

I started by putting the word out on the Intracoastal Waterway and Friends of Davis Island Facebook groups that I needed recommendations for a good diesel mechanic and marina in the Daytona Beach area (and why). I immediately got so many recommendations from both people that I knew and complete strangers that I became overwhelmed and had to create a list of both mechanics and marinas. But despite a very comprehensive list of both, I found that the mechanics either didn’t answer their phones (and didn’t have voicemail!?!?), or were booked at least three weeks out.

But even worse was the fact that every marina I contacted refused to take a boat that was under tow (as mine would have to be). It seems they have gotten screwed in the past with boats that were towed in being abandoned at their marinas.

So, instead of having a nice backup plan, I was suddenly faced with the reality of there being no continguency plan! In the meantime, my boats batteries were slowly being depleted**at the rate of about 15% per day. Since I was going on my third day at this anchorage, I was already down to about 70%, which meant that after another four days my boat would be completely dead. No refrigeration, no lights, no radio, no way to charge my phone–dead. And apparently, there was no way to fix this since, although I had towing insurance, there was no place to take my boat! I now realize why there are so many abandoned boats in Florida! What is one to do? So now I am really stressed! Sleep is not going to come easy tonight.

*”Scope” is the amount of rode that is paid out when anchoring. The amount is important for two reasons: The angle the rode makes between the vessel and the anchor is very important (the more horizontal the better); and the more rode there is, the more “stretch” there is if the wind gets strong, and especially if it gets gusty or there is a lot of wave action. With enough rode out, it will act like a shock absorber, minimizing the risk of ripping parts off the boat or the anchor out of the ground. Scope is measured as a percentage of rode deployed vs. depth. For example, if the boat was in 10 feet of water and 50 feet of rode is paid out, the scope would be 5:1. For a chain rode, this is considered adequate for normal conditions. If it’s going to be very windy, a 7:1 scope would be better. For storm conditions, some might use a scope of 10:1. For any given condition, the more scope one has out, the more secure one will be. The caveat, though, is that the wind will invariably shift, meaning the boat is liable to swing around on a radius defined by how much scope one has out. Therefore, too much scope could mean hitting other boats anchored nearby or objects or even the shore.

**The last major system I had installed on my boat was a very comprehensive lithium battery/solar panel system which was very efficient. It included 740 watts of solar panels which I hoped would charge my 600 amp hour lithium batteries enough to keep me sustained when at anchor. However, I hadn’t had a chance to check this before launching. Unfortunately, it turns out that mainly because of my mizzen boom always covers at least some of one of the solar panels, the most I was able to get out of them was about 450 watts. This was not enough to keep up with my refrigeration, the main electrical consumer on the boat. It seemed like the net result of the charging-during-the-day, depleting-at-night-cycle was that the system was draining my batteries by about 15% each day. Normally in these circumstances, one just runs the engine, using its alternator to recharge the batteries. But, without my engine, I was having to rely entirely on my solar panels, which had proven inadequate.

1. “Scope” is the amount of rode that is paid out when anchoring. The amount is important for two reasons: The angle the rode makes between the vessel and the anchor is very important (the more horizontal the better); and the more rode there is, the more “stretch” there is if the wind gets strong, and especially if it gets gusty or there is a lot of wave action. With enough rode out, it will act like a shock absorber, minimizing the risk of ripping parts off the boat or the anchor out of the ground. Scope is measured as a percentage of rode deployed vs. depth. For example, if the boat was in 10 feet of water and 50 feet of rode is paid out, the scope would be 5:1. For a chain rode, this is considered adequate for normal conditions. If it’s going to be very windy, a 7:1 scope would be better. For storm conditions, some might use a scope of 10:1. For any given condition, the more scope one has out, the more secure one will be. The caveat, though, is that the wind will invariably shift, meaning the boat is liable to swing around on a radius defined by how much scope one has out. Therefore, too much scope could mean hitting other boats anchored nearby or objects or even the shore.
   
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