Sailing to Espiritu Santo and Isla Partida and Our Engine Won’t Start

Last Saturday, we experienced the biggest emotional rollercoaster ride we’ve been on in a while. It ended with us being towed into an anchorage with a completely non-functional engine and no idea what was wrong with it.

Higher Highs

We had plans to move 15 miles to an off-grid anchorage where lots of friends and other kid boats were converging. We’d just arrived back in Baja California Sur in the La Paz area after a two-night crossing from Mazatlan on the mainland side. We were super excited to reunite with friends that we haven’t seen in several weeks or even months. It was going to be such an epic weekend of fun!

We readied the boat for sailing, checked engine and transmission oils like always, turned on the engine like normal, lifted our anchor and motored out of the anchorage. We had the motor on for 30 minutes or so, maybe a little more, before raising our sails and turning it off. In that time, nothing at all seemed amiss with the engine. 

It was such a fantastic, gorgeous day and the wind was wonderful for an easy sail toward our destination. I watched an Instagram story from our friends on Meraki that showed them also sailing and I sent them a message to ask if they were headed for the same anchorage that we were. They said yes and our excitement grew even more for what the weekend would hold. New friends and old and it was just going to be so awesome. We’d been feeling a little low in recent weeks, as we often do anytime we’re ‘stuck’ in a marina somewhere for one reason or another. A weekend getaway with good friends was just what we needed!

We sailed for about 3 hours and got within 4-5 miles of our destination when the wind started to get really flukey, changing directions a lot and also dying and then picking up again. We decided to just motor the last hour to get there rather than spend potentially several hours trying to sail it.

Lower Lows

First step to stop sailing is turn on the engine so we can have good control of the boat to drop the sails. Brenden turned it on, it came on for ~2 seconds, an alarm sounded, a solid steady tone that wasn’t normal. I looked at Brenden and asked, “What does that mean?” We’d never heard that tone before, at least not that I remembered. The engine sputtered and died. We were still sailing toward quickly-approaching land. He hit the button to stop the engine, though it was already dead, and then tried to start it again. It started again and the alarm went off and the engine immediately died again. Fuuuudge…

We gave up on the engine for the moment and switched to situation management mode. We quickly changed course, turning downwind to calm the boat and resetting the sails to turn away from land and give ourselves room to work.. ok, deep breath. I took over the helm while Brenden went down below to start trying to diagnose the engine.

I don’t know what all he did as I was focused on sailing the boat in the flukey weird winds. He called up that the first thing he was going to try was bleeding the fuel line to make sure there wasn’t any air in it somehow. Trying that, he couldn’t get fuel so thought he’d found the problem. No fuel was coming out so that meant no fuel was moving through the line. Maybe one of the fuel filters was clogged or maybe there was a clog in the fuel line itself? He changed both fuel filters. I kept sailing the boat, now headed southwest away from land and away from our intended destination for the calmest course of sail. I spotted Meraki about a mile away headed north and took note that they were nearby and we could call out to them for help if we needed to.

After changing the filters, Brenden bled the line and got fuel so felt confident that was the issue, now hopefully addressed. He told me to try to turn on the engine. I checked the engine panel, unsure if he’d left the panel ‘on’ or not. It appeared completely off, gauges down, all lights off. I hit the power button which should have turned on the panel itself, but not start the actual engine. Normally, at that point there’s a beep and the panel lights turn on and the gauges pop up. It did nothing. I told him as much. I tried it again. It started crazy beeping and the lights flashing, no warning or error message, gauges stayed down. What the $&#@? 

This was completely different ‘off’ behavior than before when we originally tried to turn the engine on to drop sails. What. The. Heck?

I’d lost focus on sailing the boat at that point and it had turned, or the wind shifted around again, and the sails started flapping noisily. So, while I turned attention back to controlling the boat, Brenden came up and tried the engine panel himself only to get that god-awful frenzied beeping and flashing lights. The engine was definitely not going to turn on. I looked over and saw Meraki passing us now headed north and I knew they’d soon be gone if we didn’t reach out. I told Brenden I was going to call them on the VHF and at least let them know what was happening. They immediately slowed down some to stand by to help, if needed. 

Ten minutes or so went by, still trying to think of what to do or try next as this now seemed like an electrical issue. We didn’t know what to do at that moment. It was getting later into the afternoon by that point and becoming apparent that we weren’t going to fix that engine on the fly. We decided to give up on the engine for the time-being and put our energy into getting to safe anchorage for the night.

Decisions Decisions

So, which anchorage? There were several nearby but on the isolated and off-grid islands. We even discussed trying to continue on to the anchorage we’d been planning to get to knowing there were friends there and lots of people to help us work on the problem. Or we could try to get back to the same anchorage we’d been in the night before, with internet and bus access to La Paz, resources at our fingertips. That seemed the best choice, but could we get there before dark?

If the wind cooperated with us, we could have sailed to any of the anchorage options. But the wind was far from cooperating with us. It continued to be very flukey: changing direction and periodically dropping to nothing or building to about 15 knots. I envisioned floating in the dark of night with no engine and no wind to move the boat where we wanted to go. It felt urgent to get the boat to a safe anchorage before that happened.

We radioed Meraki again and asked if they’d be willing to tow us, either to a nearby anchorage or back to the previous one. They said yes and turned to head toward us. We were in a dead spot with no wind at that point and we were just drifting. There was discussion back and forth between the two boats trying to decide where to go. Ultimately, they decided they would tow us all the way back to our previous anchorage so they could leave us within reach of resources to figure this out. 

As Meraki made their way to us, since we couldn’t really do anything to go to them, I went down into the galley to throw together some hasty PB&J sandwiches. It was sometime around 3pm at this point and we hadn’t eaten any lunch. I heard Brenden on the radio talking with Mick on Meraki, thanking them for the hundredth time and he apologized for messing up their plans for the day. Mick said, “Yeah, no worries! We’re all a big family out here together.” And that phrase hit me right in the feels, my frayed nerves twitched and I let my defenses down for a moment of tears.

I take pride in keeping a level head in stressful situations. Brenden and I are always aware that we’re ‘doing this thing’ with our kids in tow. When things aren’t going well, we work hard to find a balance in keeping the kids in the loop but not causing them too much alarm. The last thing we want is for the kids to get scared. But that very brief, private moment of tears was a welcome release then I collected myself and passed out sandwiches as Brenden called down that Meraki was approaching.

None of us had ever towed or been towed on a big cruising sailboat before but we all figured it out and everything went smoothly to get tied together for a two and a half hour slow tow. We didn’t want to go too fast and risk putting too much stress on the tow line but we did want to try to beat the coming dark…

During the tow, as I came back into cell service, I reached out to several other friends in the area and was overwhelmed by the offers of help and advice. What a community this is… Notably, I got ahold of Amanda and Alex from Finding Our Tomorrow on SV Rum Barrel. We’ve known this amazing family for a couple years, since way back up in Olympia when we both started our adventures south from the same marina. Now, they’ve got their boat here in La Paz and have spent many months in the area so I knew they would have connections. Amanda offered emotional support and told me to send her a message in the morning and they would come out to help troubleshoot the engine.

Approaching the anchorage, Meraki pulled us in slow and careful at last light. Dropping our anchor went well and the little bit of wind and current pulled us back to set it. I thought Kate and Mick would anchor as well but instead they checked in with us one last time to make sure that everything was ok and then they turned and headed back out into the night to go back north toward the original destination. I’m just so, so thankful for everything they did for us. 

Revival

The following day, Alex, Amanda, and their daughter, Audrey, came over to help troubleshoot the engine and catch up on life since we hadn’t seen them in several months. Within a couple hours, Brenden and Alex together checked connections and fuses all over the engine and especially anything touched the previous day. 

Unfortunately, though we tried the engine several times before she did fire up, we did not try it between each and every thing that they checked so we can’t 100% nail down exactly what it was that brought her back to life. We *think* it was removing and reinserting the fuse for the ECM, the electronic control module or primary ‘brain’ for the engine’s computer. We think that reset the computer. Huge thanks to Alex for his help!

It’s now been a few days and we’ve fired up the engine and moved the boat numerous times. The engine seems to be starting and functioning totally normally so it’s now a matter of time and use rebuilding our trust in it.

I’ve said it before and will say it again- the boating community, and especially the cruising community, is such a big, huge, critical part of why and how we do this. We try, any time that we can, to build up our good-karma-points helping others. This past weekend, we were on the receiving end and we’re just so damn thankful that everything turned out the way it did.