Starting early on a beautiful morning, we quickly motor-sailed down the Inter-coastal and entered the Atlantic. The sea was lumpy and the winds against us., After about .5 hour of bouncing around and slow progress, we turned back to go in the inlet and down to West Palm the easy way, on the Inter-coastal.
As the boat turned, the engine coughed and wheezed a few times and then died. The sails were up, so we sailed back to the Inlet entrance, attempting to start the engine a few time along the way – no luck. It’s possible the lumpy conditions have stirred up some sediment in the gas tank, clogging the fuel line – she’ll start, sometime even idle for a few minutes, but any attempt t accelerate eventually leads to a stall.
After re-entering the inlet, we were able to sail almost all the way to a friend’s slip in the Manatee pocket where we could fix the problem – “almost” because we lost the wind and had to make an emergency stop at a Marina – fortunately, we got some help from shore and, with some pulling and tugging, we ended up landing safely in a very large slip whose $25M boat was away (after almost drifting into large commercial fishing boat – whew!!). A call to Sea Tow, a mechanic and fuel specialist got us a tow to my friend’s slip, some advice on what probably happened and an appointment to get our fuel and tank cleaned in the morning. YABA -- Yet another boating adventure!!!!
 |
| A home on Sewall’s point, on the way down to the St. Lucie Inlet |
 |
| Catching up on some sleep as we wend our way to the Inlet |
 |
| Boat US towing us to Bob and Mary Ann's slip |
 |
| Our rescuers, Jess and Sage (4-legs) |
No comments:
Post a Comment