Engine Trouble

For those of you following along at home.

We have left Marathon and are heading back to St Augustine. On our second day we noticed an odd sound. Looking into the engine room I noticed a fair amount of exhaust smoke. As the engine was running fine I figured there was an exhaust leak somewhere and we motored on to No Name Harbor, Key Biscayne.

We arrived safe and sound with enough day time to make some calls. First up was Jim “Bo” Bohanan of First Mate Yacht Services, he agreed with the exhaust leak and advised us not to run the boat. His concern was not the engine, he was concerned about the exhaust heat setting the boat on fire.
IMG_3105_cropped
Following Bo’s directions for locating the leak we found a small hole in part of the exhaust manifold. This was probably left over from when the exhaust injection elbow dumped sea water into the fourth cylinder. After a few conferring calls with my brother David and our friend Rudolph of Tulum III all that is left is the doing. Using David’s recommendation I will attempt to clean the hole, drill it out and tap it for a pipe plug. If this works we will be back on track tomorrow morning, otherwise it could be a few days.

As the saying goes. living on a boat is just boat repair in exotic places. Off to the engine room I go, here’s hoping.

UPDATE: #1

Well that is not going to work. The hole is the size of my finger at the first knuckle and there isn’t much thickness to it, 1/8″ or less so drilling and tapping won’t work.

We have located two suppliers that have the unit in stock. It will take 2 days to get here, I’ll spend the today pulling the old manifold and making sure I don’t break anything.

Time to put the canvas up…..

UPDATE: #2

All the new parts are in, thank you Kathy, and the old parts are removed. It all goes back together tomorrow.

You may also like...

2 Responses

  1. MarkS says:

    OK – I gotta know…does UPS have a delivery boat in your area?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.