On The Road Again (barely)

Distance: 33 miles/Time: 6 hours

So, as usual, the footnote will have all the details about how my engine wouldn’t even idle this morning without sucking air, how it then overheated, and then wouldn’t start at all, but how, despite all that, I was able to finally depart the Halifax Harbor Marina in Daytona Beach and head northwards again.¹

The winds were about 10-13 knots due east, which would make it ideal to motor sail (i.e., use both the engine and sails), but I wanted to wait till the engine had proved itself for awhile before hoisting any sails. I also had prepped the anchor to be quickly dropped should the engine fail on me in the middle of the ICW like it had done last time.

After passing the last bridge out of Daytona, I hoisted the Genoa, which increased our speed from 5.5 knots to 6.5 knots, and after another half hour, I secured the anchor and turned off the windlass. The motor was humming along nicely. (Although I did feel nervous and found myself holding my breath as we approached the spot where the engine had quit before.)

Most of the 33 or so miles of ICW looked like this today: Houses on one side and undeveloped land or protected lands on the other.

It was nice to finally be done with big cities and see some trees and beaches! In fact, there were times

when both sides were protected land which was just lovely! Because it was off season, there was very little traffic. Often an hour would go by before I saw another boat. Off season also meant that many houses were closed up as the snowbirds retreated to their homes up north during hurricane season.

It turned out to be a very pleasant trip with a nice breeze and partly sunny skies which kept the temperature in check. I arrived at the Matanzas anchorage right about 4:00 pm. I was hoping to have arrived earlier so that I would have time to tour Fort Matanzas, “…completed in 1742, which defended the southern approach to the Spanish military settlement of St. Augustine” but I was too late. And, unfortunately, the only day it is closed it Tuesdays, so I won’t be able to see it tomorrow before I leave, either.

And speaking of tomorrow, I’m either going to go to the St. Augustine Municipal Marina (where I had intended to stay last weekend before all the engine issues) to pick up five packages which I had sent there and then continue on to the Pine Island anchorage about 2 hours north of St. Augustine for the night, or…stay right here and rest a day. We’ll see how I feel in the morning.

The tentative plan for the next week based on this afternoon’s weather forecasts is to stay “inside” (the ICW) for the next four or five days due to high winds and seas “outside” and hopefully make Charleston, SC. Then there might be a good weather window for an overnighter from Charleston to Beaufort, SC, the last stop before Oriental. So, theoretically, I could be in Oriental in about a week. Of course, I thought I’d be in St. Augustine last weekend, so you know how that goes!

1. So, as I mentioned yesterday, today I planned to get out of the slip at high tide, which was basically an hour and a half either side of 8:30 am. Woke up at 6:30, got dressed, and started prepping the boat. By the time I had taken down and stowed the air conditioner and shore power, it was 8:00 and the tide was starting to come down from 6.8 feet. So, I started the engine to give it a good test at idle while finishing up the rest of the prep.
   
   By the time I had removed all but one bow line and one stern line on the boat and everything else was ready to go, it was right about 8:30 and the tide was showing 6.6-6.5′. (I bottom out at 5.75, and the bottom of the sea is not necessarily smooth.) It was time to go. The wind was blowing the nose off the dock so much that I wanted to get someone to help me leave, so walked down the dock and grabbed an 80-year-old man working on his boat. I told him all he’d need to do was undo the bow line and walk it down the dock to the end, keeping my bow close, and then just throw the line aboard.
   
   As he reached down to untie the line from the dock cleat, I climbed aboard to get behind the helm. As I was doing so, the engine surged a few times, then died. I COULDN’T BELIEVE IT! It had been running for at least a half hour. It had run for longer than that under load a week ago when I arrived. Yet somehow, despite all my efforts of the previous week, IT HAD GOTTEN WORSE! At that point, if someone had offered to trade me their car for my boat, I would have done it. No hesitation.
   
   I had no idea what to do next. I had done everything I knew how to do with the engine, which meant that next I needed a mechanic. The problem was that they are typically 3-4 weeks out with appointments, they charge $150/hour, and tracing down an air leak is notoriously time consuming, and I’d have to stay at a marina while waiting for him, and probably waiting for parts after he figured out what was going on. And this would be a transient rate at the marina, for likely weeks. It would be difficult to afford both the marina and the mechanic.
   
   Not knowing what else to do, I bled the engine again, and sure enough, there was A LOT of air in the system, most of it in the secondary filter as before. Somehow air was getting in the system there (or upstream of there). But I had replaced or carefully inspected almost all of it. I didn’t know what to do. But, I realized that if I didn’t figure it out in the next 30 minutes, I was stuck here for at least another day due to the tide being almost already too low, and likely for much longer than that.
   
   I made sure that I tightened up the bleed nut on the secondary filter very tight this time, bled the rest of the system (I had to do it twice all around to get all the air out this time). Then I made the decision: I would keep the electric prime/bleed pump on while running the engine. Others had already recommended this to me, but it seemed like just painting over the issue. But, I was desperate! So, I left it on, started the engine, and ran it up to 1500 RPM again.
   
   Then I made another decision: I was going to test it under load right there in the marine before I left the dock. So, while the engine was idling, I found some more stout dock line and attached two more spring lines to my boat, then put it in forward gear at 1500 RPM. After five minutes of running fine, I increased it to 2000 RPM, and after five minutes with no hiccups, I decided I would go for broke and run it at 2500 RPM for 30 minutes to give it a thorough test (2500 is higher than I would ever cruise). As the timer was running on that, I closed up the engine compartment, put the tools away, and did everything else I could to get the boat ready to leave yet again. (The depth meter was now reading 6.3-6.4′.)
   
   I had to also keep situational awareness around me. Most marinas do not allow runups like I was doing at the dock mainly because of the wash that you put out behind your boat. Any boat trying to transit behind my boat would get “blown” all over the place by the prop wash coming off my boat. So, I was trying to keep my eyes out for any incoming or outgoing boats so that I could throttle down before they were affected. Luckily, this was Monday morning, and nobody was about.
   
   However, after 15 minutes of running it in gear at 2500 RPM, I heard a little alarm from the engine control panel, looked down, and saw that my engine temperature was almost maxed out! Great! Now the engine is overheading, too. I knew that I had an mild overheating problem. It had been fixed for awhile, but had come back since leaving Tampa. Either way, I immediately shut down the engine to let it cool off. I was pretty confident that running it at a lower RPM would bring the temperature down, and although I hadn’t been able to run it the entire 30 minutes at that RPM, it did fine after 15 minutes and had run for 35 minutes total without a glitch. It seemed that keeping the fuel pump on was the solution. I rechecked the engine one last time for leaks and any obvious overheating damage (whatever that would look like!), then buttoned it up, went back up top, and attempted to start it.
   
   But, it wouldn’t start. It turned over, but wouldn’t start. WTF? Did I somehow damage the engine when it got hot so that it won’t start? It turns over…. Maybe it’s got air in it again? Back to the engine, pulled the bleed screw off the secondary filter–nothing but fuel. Okay, at least that’s good. Fuel under pressure instead of suction seems to have solved the air ingestion issue. But why won’t it start? Maybe now that it’s cooled down more….? Back up to the cockpit, attempt to start engine. Same thing. Wait a minute! Could it be? I was definitely in a hurry to shut down the engine when I saw how hot it was. Perhaps I didn’t… yep. I hadn’t pushed the fuel shutoff cable far enough back in to the run position. Once I corrected that, the engine started fine. (It was now already 10 am and the depth meter was now reading a steady 6.2′.)
   
   I ran down the dock to grab the 80 year old man again, and he ambled back to my boat with me. He walked me down the dock, I backed out of the slip, made it out of the shallow marina channel into the ICW, turned north, accelerated to a nice, gentle 2000 cruise RPM (I felt the poor engine should be treated gentle after what I had put her through!), and set off for the Matanzas River anchorage, free at last! ↩︎