Lyn's Log, 17th June 2008
Engine trouble!

Klemtu, BC.
N52º36', W128º31'
17,485 miles.

By nine in the morning we ready to make the trip up the long Princess Royal Channel. The engine fired up and then almost immediately cut and refused to start again. The starter motor was turning over the engine but it just wouldn’t fire. For the first time in the sixteen years we have had Sentinel we could not think of anything else we could try to get the engine to start. It was midday. There was a breeze out on the waterway but nothing in the cove. We were miles from anywhere, no-one around, out of range even of a phone connection. The chart showed a tiny native village a dozen miles away. We inflated the dinghy and attached the outboard, then strapped it firmly to the side of Sentinel near the stern. With no power to spare for the windlass, Andrew raised the anchor by hand and I sat in the dinghy ready to start it up and get us out of the cove. This worked better than expected. In calm waters the tiny outboard was moving the ten ton yacht at nearly 2½ knots. By two o’clock we were out on the main waterway, raised the sails and began sailing south down a narrow channel towards the village, into a contrary wind, of course. The wind was light and faltering, the tide turned against us and by nine that evening we had made just ten miles to a small anchorage called Mary Cove.

In the morning we repeated the procedure with the dinghy out of Mary Cove, and then sailed and pushed Sentinel to the village, Klemtu, where we tied up on the fuel dock. We hadn't much hope of finding a qualified mechanic in such an out the way place, but the fuel dock attendant said there was a guy called Grant who might be able to help. Grant arrived early that evening and spent the best part of two hours going over the fuel system. His first conclusion was what we suspected, some kind of failure in the injector pump we had bought in Anacortes. This was bad news. The village had just a once-weekly ferry service, so it might take a month to get the pump sent out to where it could be fixed and returned. At least Grant rigged a shore power cable we could use, and we recharged our batteries overnight that had been flattened by repeated attempts to crank the engine.

When we woke in the morning it was raining sheets, and did so the entire day. Grant arrived at nine and after a cup of coffee decided that before dismantling the injector pump he would to have another go at bleeding any air out of the system. He opened and closed first this bolt and that, pumping fuel through by hand, finally working up to the injectors themselves, and with the batteries now fully charged and cranking the starter motor hard, suddenly to everyone's surprise the engine roared into life. So there we were with a working engine. Had it been a little bit of dirt in the pump which we had now cleared, or had an airlock got in somewhere? Grant suggested we look at the lift pump as it did not seem to work very well. We took it off during the morning, got out the service kit for it which we have carried around since we bought Sentinel, and took it over to where Grant lived. He gave us a huge bag of prawns he had been given which were in his freezer. There were 112 large prawns in all, half of which we ate cooked in garlic butter for dinner that night. They were delicious and we were all prawned out.

The walk over to Grant gave us an excuse to look around. Klemtu (pic above) is a rough little fishing village of no more than 300 people, nearly all First Nations - Indians. There was a sign saying that it had the longest boardwalk in North America and was in the Guinness Book of Records. We couldn't find a trace of this. Although the village was run down with no more than a track for its only road, there was evidence of a good deal of past government subsidy. This included a large community hall, two schools, museum and a joint police and fire station. Grant had a large shed half filled with the town's old, small fire engine that he was doing up. He told us the fire station had replaced it with a much grander new engine, but it was so big it took them half an hour to get it out of the tiny station onto the muddy track, and when it was snowy they couldn’t get it out at all. In the last year four houses had burnt down (three were arson) and each time they hadn't been able to get the new engine out of the shed in time! We took our dripping selves into the village store. In pride of place on a stand near the checkout were sets of oilskins for Barbie. Where else would that be a top seller?

Grant duly returned next morning with the refurbished lift pump and refitted it. It was still raining. We cleaned up and decided to visit Alexandra Inlet to the north as we had heard it was pretty. The engine ran all right but after a while I could smell diesel and went to have a look at the engine. There was a lot of diesel leaking from the injector pump, burning as it hit the hot engine. Andrew tightened everything up but was unable to stop the leak and decided it was better to return to Klemtu because if we anchored for the night, air might get into the pump and we might not be able to start the engine in the morning. If fuel could escape, air could get in when the engine cooled down.

On our way back we saw a whale quite close to, going our way. First we saw the fountain when it blew, leaving a mist in the air for half a minute. Then we saw a hugely long black back with a comparatively small black dorsal fin, and then it lifted its tail out the water to show us. The flukes had a V-shaped notch and so it would have been a Humpback. How nice of it to come along and cheer us up. Back at Klemtu we tied up back in our old place, still able to use the power cable, and walked across town to find Grant. He had just got news of a suicide in his family and was pretty distraught. It didn't look as if he would be much further help.

In the morning we tracked down the exact spot where the leak was originating under one of the bolts on the injector pump together with its washer. We couldn't stop the flow by retightening, so very gingerly we removed them, then dropped them and lost them down the bilge, retrieved them after a good deal of searching, cleaned and smothered them in gasket goo and screwed the bolt back up tight, hoping the goo would stop the leak but not get inside the pump and cause another blockage. How relieved we were to find the engine still worked and it had now stopped leaking.