While in San Carlos we had a special guest come to visit, S/V Sierra Wind’s previous owner, Jim. One afternoon, we heard a small plane buzzing overhead and didn’t think much of it until I realized there are no airports nearby. Jim had flown his private plane down from Los Angeles and agreed to deliver a new lithium battery for us. We would have had him bring the solar panels, too, but those would have been much too big to fit in the fuselage of his small plane. We got dinner with him that night and he came by the marina the next day to deliver the battery and see the boat.
Jim is a bit of a character, and I suppose you’d have to be to put over $100,000 worth of improvements into a $30,000 sailboat. He is the one responsible for the complete redesign of the interior and most of the customizations onboard. He was also the one who re-power the boat and claims S/V Sierra Wind was the first boat in the US with a Volkswagen marine engine. And it may be the only one with a VW engine at this point. It was fun listening to him talk on and on about all the changes he had made to the boat and seeing him point out different features that I assumed came standard but were, in fact, his own design. I asked what caused him to name the boat Sierra Wind. After all his years hiking in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, he said that there was nothing like summiting a peak and feeling the kiss of a light breeze on top to cool you down. Hence came the name Sierra Wind.
Eitan and Jim made their way through the boat, talking about what Eitan had changed in his four years of ownership. One thing that had continuously stumped Eitan was that he could not find a way to change to zinc on the engine’s heat exchanger. There was no way he could find to access it. So, the engine access covers came off and tools came out. Jim fiddled around with it for some time but also didn’t have any luck. However, he did figure out the right size wrench needed to complete the task, but the zinc remained unchanged. Afterwards, Jim stayed around for one more drink then Eitan dropped him off back at the dock as I got on with dinner preparations.
Once Eitan returned, he turned on the engine to top up the batteries and make some hot water for showers. I finished making dinner and began to set the table upstairs when I smelled something burning. I turned off the stove and checked the food, but nothing seemed overcooked or burning. Perplexed where it would be coming from, I went back outside, definitely saw smoke, and called to Eitan. He frantically yelled to me “TURN OFF THE ENGINE!”, which I did as fast as I could. He shouted some loud expletives and threw himself onto the cockpit bench, mumbling under his breath. I had honestly never seen him this upset before and was a bit confused about the whole situation. I sat there in silence and he calmly asked me to go open the engine seacock. Apparently, Jim had closed the raw water intake to the engine while trying to replace the zinc and didn’t reopen it. Meaning, we were basically sitting there frying our engine without any cooling system. MUCHO GRANDE NO BUENO!!!
To make matters worse, the raw water pump to the engine had been leaking for some time and Eitan had just replaced the expensive pump no more than two days prior. Aside from potentially destroying the new pump, we could have destroyed the entire engine or caught the boat on fire. This was a big rookie mistake considering one of the first things you should always check on any boat is that there is water coming out of the cooling water discharge port when you turn the engine on. Although it wasn’t quite Eitan’s fault, he blamed himself for not double-checking that the intake was reopened when they finished working on the engine. I opened the seacock and started the engine. No water came out and the engine temperature started rising, so I hurriedly turned it back off again. Something was definitely wrong.
We ate dinner in awkward silence, letting the engine cool off. Once finished, Eitan went back to work taking apart the brand-new raw water pump and found the new impeller was completely destroyed. The rest of the pump looked ok so he replaced the impeller and hoped that would do the trick. I started the engine once more and have never been more excited to hear the splash of the cooling water as it discharged from the boat. Considering the engine had been running without cooling for about 5 minutes, we were quite lucky nothing more serious had happened. This was a “cheap” lesson and a good reminder for both of us to always check that the cooling water is flowing when the engine is started!
Since I didn’t have any pictures from the visit or incident, here are some nice views of the anchorage in San Carlos where it all happened:
Yikes! Are you still here in SC?
No! Back in Mexico now!
Wow, what an ‘adventure’. Good to hear that the engine ‘survived’ and the lesson was not an expensive one…. As they say ‘you live and learn’…. Enjoy