Engine failure at sea

We recently experienced an engine failure while traveling from Norfolk, Virginia, to Morehead City, North Carolina. It all began with a starboard engine “high fuel temperature” warning and ended with an engine failure – it just shut itself down. We immediately began trouble shooting as our route was taking us around Cape Hatteras at night with less than optimal sailing conditions (the wind was right in our faces and the seas were a bit rough). We called our friend, Steven, from Catamaran Guru, to ask for advice. He and his crew had just pulled Snapdragon into Loggerhead Marina and the gaggle of South African sailors were glad to offer us some ideas about how to remedy our current state of affairs. Cameron and I changed both fuel filters hoping that would improve our circumstances, but nope – it did not not solve our problem. After a couple of hours, we tried restarting the engine and it did start again and even ran for about 4 hours before sounding another alarm and then shutting down. Shorty afterward the port engine alarmed – this, of course, caused a lot of stress and led to our spending the entire night fearful that the second engine would fail – leaving us fighting the wind and tide to try to get to our destination. Although American Honey is a sail boat, we were heading into a 15 knot wind directly on our nose. Unlike monohull sailboats, large catamarans do not perform well in a close reach or close haul point of sail. Yes, we could have sailed in the opposite direction from our destination; however, we had the Gulf Stream to contend with as well as a small craft warning the next evening.

While we continued to motor sail with a single (alarming) engine into the wind all night, the sun came up and brought us some hope for the day. The sunrise always brings hope, doesn’t it? I was able to restart the starboard engine and the port engine continued to run despite telling us something wasn’t right with it. With one engine and sails up we were able to make about 3-4 knots of forward speed. With the second engine added, our speed increased to 5.5 knots. We were blessed with a text from a fellow Bali 4.4 owner Kirk of Resolute (yes, he was our knight in shining armor just like Kirk of Resolute sounds!). We chatted for a while, and after I shared our problem with him, he suggested we check the fuel line banjo fittings. His boat experienced a similar problem and this is what he found, a plug of crud in the connector blocking the flow of fuel into the filter.

Now we had another possible solution that could fix our problem in the starboard engine and stop a problem from worsening in the other. Both engines were running and we were headed towards Cape Lookout Shoals – more troubled water for sure. The Diamond Shoals are called the Graveyard of the Atlantic and are thought to be responsible for up to 600 shipwrecks along the Hatteras Island and Outer Banks shorelines. They’re always changing in depth and formation and they’re basically hidden under the waves. I wanted to shut down the currently running starboard engine and check our banjo connector while Kelli worried that we could face a situation where the engine would not restart at all. Kelli trusted me as she always does and gave the go ahead to shut her down and check for gunk in the connector and we were all extremely glad that we did.

Cameron and I cleaned clots of crud out of our connector, primed the engine, and the next time we revved her up she purred to life. We waited about 15 minutes to make sure that the smooth running sounds continued and then we shut down the port engine and found the same crud and did the same fix with the same glorious result – both engines were now running problem-free and we could enjoy the last several hours of our trip into Morehead City.