Murphy's Law

We woke up after spending our second night in quarantine and received a call from our customs agent who would be meeting us at the dock. He sounded very nice on the phone, asking us various questions like what our plans were and registration information. He told us the customs check-in fee was $19.99 and that's when we realized we had no cash on board. So, he let us go ashore and find an ATM. We walked down a long stretch of road in our full foul weather gear and deck boots which may have been an interesting sight to see for the outside world. Basically, we had the equivalent of snow pants and winter coats on. We finally came upon a gas station, got some cash and walked back to the boat to meet up with the agent. He arrived shortly after we got back and I must say, he was one of the nicest, most friendly customs agents I have ever dealt with. For those of you who've ever dealt with customs, it can usually be quite the ordeal. But this guy was great! He told us all kinds of stories and traded tips about adventures he had been on and was clearly jealous of our future sailing plans to come. All in all, customs took about 15 minutes, but still it was late in the morning by the time we were ready to cast off. We immediately started the engine after the agent left and hit the sea at around 11:30. We motored out through the hurricane gate and hoisted the sails. We hugged the coast for as long as we could, trying to get as high on the wind and as West as possible. Cruising at about 5.5 knots we made good headway towards the Long Island Sound and once again, the weather was B-E-A-utiful. Bright and sunny and a good 15 knot breeze. The wind direction wasn't quite in our favor though, so we knew we would have to tack a couple of times to reach Fishers Island at a half decent hour.

The weather held for us most of the day until late afternoon when the wind died off a bit. We didn't want to do the approach to Fisher's Island too late with all of the rocks, shoals and uncharted buoys around so we kicked the engine on and began to motor-sail towards Block Island hoping to get a few lifts in the wind so we could save some time.

Then this is where things got interesting.

Will and I are skilled in many aspects of sailing and cruising life. One aspect where we fall a little short, is diesel engines. Throughout our entire trip and even in the build up before we left, we talked about how we really, REALLY hoped that nothing would go wrong with our Yanmar 2GM diesel engine. One thing that we figured would be especially brutal, was that if we ran out of fuel and air got into the fuel lines. If this were to happen we would have to bleed the lines to re-prime the fuel pumps. We had heard from our friend Pat South that this was a particularly not fun thing to have to do, ESPECIALLY if you're out at sea. So neither of us knowing how to even do that, we went on about our journey just with the hopes that it would never happen to us. How could it right? Well folks, like the good ol' Murphy's Law we all learned about in high school, anything that's bound to happen, will happen.

Sure enough, right as the sun ducked under the horizon, right off of Block Island, right in the middle of the New York shipping lane, the engine sputtered...

We heard a funky noise and the whole engine started to shake loudly, knocking us out of our relaxing daze as we cruised along. We immediately reacted and shut down the engine. We looked at the fuel gauge and saw that the fuel level was still at half a tank. No way could we have run out of diesel! Unless the fuel gauge busted on us while we were cruising down here? No way! Not us! Not Tilikum! We continued sailing for a bit, in the dark, in the shipping lane and finally got up the courage to restart the engine. It started just fine! Will said to let the engine idle for a bit before kicking it into gear so we did, and then it happened again. The engine sputtered, shook violently making the whole boat tremble, and then shut off on us. It had happened. The one thing we had hoped never would, did. We tried putting more diesel in the tank but why would it be that easy, right? There's a big difference between gas and diesel engines. When gas engine's run out of gas, you just put more gas in. When diesel's run out of gas, its a whole other story. You have to do something called "bleed the lines" which of course, we had no idea how to do. Basically, you have to get all of the air out of the fuel lines before it will start again. Bleeding the lines isn't an easy thing to do, and in a tight engine bay with rolling swell when you've never done it before (and without Google by your side) it's even trickier. I took over the helm from our auto pilot and starting to dip, dive, and dodge all of the now immanent tugs and barges that were heading right for us. Will hit the books. Though we had hoped it never would happen to us, like any good adventure you always prepare for the worst. Will had luckily printed off a massive Yanmar troubleshooting manual before the trip so he whipped that out as well as this other enormous Yanmar service manual. From the duct-taped spine to the faded covers and various years of coffee stains, this book looked like it had lived many lives. Will had some figuring out to do between these two textbooks. I guess those studying skills paid off in school because in about an hour and half of me driving the boat like mad through swell and tugboats with limited lights (our masthead, spreader and deck lights all shorted out) Will learned how to bleed the lines! The sweet purr of the engine as it fired up and didn't sputter out on us again was music to our ears! After a massive eruption of hoots, hollers, and high-fives we decided to drop the sails and motor straight for Fishers Island.

By the time we approached the island, the wind had died off completely, making the whole Sound glassy calm with not a cloud out in the midnight sky. The phosphorescence peaked up and you could see a solid blue stream coming off our prop behind the boat. We slowly navigated our way through the buoys and into the marked channel at the edge of the basin in Fishers, then motoring our way into the FIYC (Fisher's Island Yacht Club). We tied up the boat, and rowed across the basin to our little island oasis where we would spend next week or so. It was a very calm, beautiful ending to the first leg of Team Tilikum's journey.

So what went wrong?

Turns out you can't motor-sail while you're heeling the boat over 30 degrees for a few hours. We did that. So when we saw that our fuel gauge was at half tank we assumed it was fine. But, apparently when you're heeled over and the tank gets down that low, the fuel sloshes around in the tank which can cause air to get in the lines. SO, all we have to do now is make sure when we're motor-sailing that the fuel tank doesn't drop much below 3/4s full.

Lesson learned!

Capt. Sam