so after suffering along like a pin ball in a pin ball machine don and were both clearly the not having fun camp not looking forward to the next 36 hours at all. more water was coming in the boat in more places so i finally i said to don “we could bail out and go to another island”, yes, he said that sounds good, how far, “50nm straight down wind” i replied. this would take us on a track pretty much perpendicular to our destination but would let us work our way through the exemenos giving us some protection form the painful beam swell. it seems anything beem or forward of the beem is really uncomfortable (we only have a 2 meter sea) with lots of loud banging as the waves hit the bridge deck.
we made the turn got the sail out and all of a sudden we where surfing down waves between 5 and 7 kts. we congratulated each other on the good call and broke out a celebratory beer. we where doing so well we decided to shut down the starbord engine. as don did this he noticed none of the warning lights came on. this was another clasic uh oh moment and as expected the engine did not start when he tried to restart it again.
so no we where back to one engine, we congratulated each other on our decision to always start the new engine before shutting down the running one but this was getting a bit frustrating. we finished our beer (and chips) before tackling this project. i started probing the wiring with a volt meter to see where we did and did not have power and i noticed a fried gnd wire (see photo). this was a ground from the engine block to the rudder post. not critical but it was obvious something hot had shorted on this and melted it down.
after a bit of poking around the wiring harness i found a 20 amp inline fuse that was blow. don had no spares for this so i wired in a new holder with 15 amp fuse. low and behold the engine started right up. unfortunately the oil light and buzzer did not come on pre start. i checked the sensor which was good and which don had a spare of so concluded it was a relay which we did not have a spare of.
we had been running this engine for quite a while so don checked the oil and low and behold it was down a quart and a half. we toped it off buttoned everything up and now we where back to two engines. the good news is we would never have been able to make the fix onthe previous course and prob would have continued to run with low oil.
by now it was happy hour so we took a break in the cockpit to enjoy the sun and beutiful water. it was don’s turn for dinner tonight and he made us curried raman with corn and tuna. did i meniton we have been doing a mac & cheese and raman only trip. so far we have come up with a new way to cook them every night, perhspas we will work up a cook book!
the plan for the evening is to drop anchor just inside up exuma sound, should be there around midnight and may actually both get to sleep not under way!
cheers
roger
