Ft Lauderdale... at the Fuel Dock

The passage from St Augustine to Ft Lauderdale went without any drama... almost.

Wednesday afternoon and Thursday were very nice. We had decent wind, if a little light, so we did some motor sailing and also had a chance to use our light air gennaker sail.

Late Wednesday night we passed Cape Canaveral about 3 miles offshore and I was able to make out Space Shuttle Discovery on it's launch pad. Discovery is scheduled to launch early Saturday morning so we slipped through before they closed off the area to marine traffic. It wouldn't do to be sailing along as booster rockets dropped into the sea around us. But what a great view it would have been!

Thursday evening the wind piped up giving us 20-25 knot winds and 5-7 foot seas. This was a bit more than forecast, but it wasn't on the nose so I had no complaints!

By early Friday AM the seas built to about 6-8 ft and became confused. This was due to the Gulf stream being WAY inshore and piling up against the strong North wind. Now I did have something to complain about! From Lake Worth all the way south to Ft Lauderdale we were fighting 3 to 4 knots of current from the Gulf Stream. We tucked in as close as 1 mile from shore, but it didn't help.

With the wind directly on the stern and Mirasol slewing about in confused seas, it took only a few unplanned violent gybes to convince us to drop the main sail. So, with both engines running and a little jib flying we were doing 8.5 knots but only making 4.5 knots headway.

We arrived outside Port Everglades' (Ft Lauderdale) channel entrance just after dawn on Friday and slowed down to wait for a cargo ship to transit the channel. As soon as the engines were idled, the starboard engine died. A few attempts to re-start failed. The engine would start and then die again after a couple seconds. I figured we had clogged fuel filters from gunk in our tanks being stirred up from rough weather. This was disappointing as I am very careful with the fuel we select and take a lot of care to avoid any water in the tank which would lead to algae growth.

We motored through the channel and into the ship turning basin which is just inside the entrance channel. While Jen turned circles in the ship turning basin keeping well clear of any ships, I changed both fuel filters on the starboard engine. The port authority kept coming by to tell us we couldn't be there and Jen kept begging engine problems. In the 15 minutes I took to change both fuel filters, the Port Authority had threatened us with a $50,000 fine and jail time if we didn't move. Nice.

(In the light hearted spirit of this blog, a rant concerning the harassment of my family while we were on a sailboat experiencing engine trouble... has been deleted. However, the words Police State came to mind.)

The filter change didn't solve the problem. Not desiring to be incarcerated, we left the area on one engine, transited the 17th St Causeway Bridge and carefully navigated up the busy ICW to the Bahia Mar marina.

Now a catamaran runs just fine on one engine when your going in a straight line at speed, but at slow speeds you tend to go in a circle. That's not much help with docking or maneuvering in congested areas with lots of current. As there were no available anchorages or viable slips, we talked the marina into letting us camp at their fuel dock. Very nice of them as we are crowding their business a little. Thank you Bahia Mar!

Once on the dock I continued my trouble-shooting with no success. My best guess was a bad fuel pump or some type of blockage so I called in the pros. Multi-Tech Marine, a firm with which I've had good experience in the past, arrived within an hour and a half of my call and determined the problem was with the low pressure fuel pump. They were surprised, and said that "those never fail". An unfortunate result of the "never fail" status was that in all of Ft Lauderdale, there was no replacement part available. Really? In Ft Lauderdale??? So, we're stuck here at the fuel dock until Monday when the part will arrive.

The mechanic said I might be able to bypass the low pressure fuel pump so that we could leave the fuel dock and get into a slip, but the results would be unreliable. Hmmm... "unreliable" is a bad thing for an engine to be when negotiating the New River in Ft Lauderdale where the river is narrow, busy, has a fast current, and throngs with very, VERY expensive yachts. So we're camping on the fuel dock for the weekend. But hey, it's Ft Lauderdale and it's 80 degrees and sunny. We'll manage just fine.