This is how my day started – being towed back to the Town Creek Marine by Sea Tow. Left the dock this morning at 4:45 to try to get to Oriental before the big storm front came through. I made it about 2.5 miles and the engine slowed down and then died. I immediately anchored, and tried to get the engine re-started. After a while, I was successful, so I pulled up the anchor (a big job because I have an over-sized anchor and chain) and started off again – but it only ran for about two minutes. So, I re-anchored and tried again to get the engine going. I figured I would now head back to the marina. Got it going again, pulled up the anchor once more and started back, but this time the engine only ran for about 30 seconds. I re-anchored again and then called Sea Tow. About an hour and a half later, I was being towed back to the marina.The Sea Tow guy was great and very professional – here you can see that he is towing faster than my boat can go under its own power! I wish I had taken pictures of me working on the engine later, but I was too concentrated on what I was doing, and stressed. When I got back to the marina, I paid for another day of dockage (for today – trying again tomorrow), and then talked with the marina’s diesel mechanics. They were too busy to work me in to their schedules today, so it was going to Monday at the earliest before the got to me. I was pretty sure the issue was that I had introduced air into the pressurized fuel system yesterday when I drained a small amount of fluid out of the fuel/water separator filter just to be sure there was no water in the system. Realizing that I had all day to try to solve the problem myself, I found a You Tube video that walked me through bleeding the air out of the fuel system. I worked on that for about an hour, and had the engine running again. As I worked on the engine, I took in more detail about it – I thought the engine was a Yanmar 3GM30, which is a 27 hp diesel, but I found out that it really is a 3HM35F – a 30 hp diesel. Happy times yesterday with the crew of Bella Gatto at the pool hall Cafe in downtown Beaufort – $2 cheeseburgers and good $5 IPA!
