Seabird is Adrift

Before leaving Roque Island we replaced our fuel filters. I have heard many stories of boats getting bounced around in the ocean (after sitting on a dock or on the hard for long periods of time) and, once the boat gets bounced around, the fuel sloshes around in the tank which mixes in all the sediment on the bottom. Then, hours or days later, you are running your engine and your filters are overwhelmed with sediment. Seabird, our lovely 32’ sailboat made in Santa Ana California, has a 75 gallon diesel tank which we have never filled.  She came with a full tank, and heck, we are sailors after all.

Now that we are on our honeymoon trip to Prince Edward Island, we have been crossing the Three Nautical Mile line like a bad habit, whereas in the previous summers we were only Casco Bay sailors, though I should make a point in saying that we lived at Dimillo’s for two years and one might say that our tanks were in constant motion. We change our fuel filters regularly and between filter changes I often will drain the Racor filter to remove whatever sediment has built up. In general, I feel that our fuel system is too big for our needs, causing us to store diesel for too long, which can be bad, as bugs and algae can grow. I mention all of this to you because Seabird had a fuel problem.

As mentioned, we were sailing from a beautiful anchorage in Maine attempting to clear into Canada via the port of Seal Cove, Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick Canada. The wind was southeast which made things harder as we were trying to go almost due East, so we were tacking a lot and dealing with some current in the Bay of Fundy. It caused a few arguments about our course and if we in fact were even heading the right direction. After hours of this it was obvious that our boat was not going to be able to clear into customs before customs closed. With this new information deduced, we opted to sail all the way to Yarmouth, almost 70 miles further, as we could make our landfall during the normal business hours of customs. After shaking hands on the matter it was done.

I took the first 3 hour shift and every now and then I would fire up our 30HP Nanni diesel to get us east when no wind was present. When my shift was up, Sophi, my lovely wife, took the helm as I tried to grab a few winks. While resting, I could hear that she was having as much fun as I was earlier. Occasionally she would be forced to tack, and then she would start the motor then kill it then tack again and so on. I was mostly asleep when the engine started starving for fuel (which is actually how you turn off a compression engine) and Sophi asked “why did it do that?” I hollered back that she needed to pull harder and hold the kill switch longer. Little did I know that she never did touch the lever to turn the fuel off to our little engine that could.