Day one on our trip north, after a one day late start…

This morning I awoke at 6:30, jumped in the car, and got to the Yanmar dealer in Annapolis just when they opened up. I got the stupid bleed screw back to the boat, a quick engine repair, water tank fill, and ice replenishment later, we left the dock right around 10:30 AM.

Around 10:50 the engine died.

Tightened things, re-bled the system, and we were underway before long.

Not far from Pooles Island, the engine died again.

Frustrating, to be sure. So, we check the fuel system front to back and notice a lot of gunk in the Racor prefilter’s water separator. Oddly, when I was doing engine maintenance in prep for this trip I didn’t change this filter out (I’m not sure what I was thinking), so a quarter mile from Pooles Island it got done. And the engine worked!

Mostly anyhow. Periodically during the day the engine would lose RPMs, and after a few minutes would start running OK. Not too far from our anchorage for the evening the motor did slow enough to stall out. I bled the system (I’m getting really good at it…it took less than three minutes and I’m sure I can cut that in half), and the engine worked perfectly for the rest of the day.

We are now happily anchored in a little cove called Veazey off of the mouth of the Bohemia River, a short trip to the C&D canal. Lauren is making dinner as I type. I’m thinking a little swim might be in order later.

But what about tomorrow? We must transit the C&D under power.

I think we are going to go for it. What ever the problem is, bleeding the system seems to make the engine run fine. At least for awhile. Air is getting in somewhere (I suspect through the fuel filter…perhaps it needs a new O-ring), and I swear I’ll find the culprit eventually. In the meantime, if we need to do a fire drill every few hours I think we’ll be fine. Honestly, at this point I think we can bleed the fuel system before we lose steerage.

Not ideal, maybe; but that is what adventure is all about. Over coming obstacles.