Saturday, September 12, 2020
And what a different day it was! Again the east winds pushed us further up Long Island Sound and we began to plan out the next few days since the weather and winds looked promising. By 3:30 we were past the mouth of the Connecticut River and decided to turn into Joshua Cove for the night. We furled the headsail and turned on the engine. Five minutes later we could smell the unmistakable acrid odor of rubber burning and knew that our starter had fried—again. This had also occurred in the summer of 2019 just off the entrance to Plymouth Harbor in Massachusetts. We had to be towed into Plymouth where we sat on a mooring for 4 days awaiting parts and a mechanic. This time we knew to keep the engine going and were able to set anchor in the cove before shutting everything down and calling TowBoat U.S. We called Bruce & Johnson’s Marina in Branford to make sure they had space for us but, again, no answer. We’ll try again at 7 a.m. tomorrow when they open.
As we told our kids, though, we are fine, safe, and in good hands. And, like Blanche DuBois once told us, tomorrow we’ll humbly depend “on the kindness of strangers.”
The sunset was spectacular over the Sound:
Hi David and Carol, Love the blog. Good luck with the starter. Wonder why a second failure??
ReplyDeleteOur suspicion is that the starter is not the root cause of the starter failure. We suspect the ignition or the relay switch is not always shutting off power to the starter, so it stays engaged and burns out. Because the engine is running, And we are in the cockpit, we don’t hear the starter engaged with the flywheel on the engine.
ReplyDeleteSo we want to have the ignition replaced along with the starter and relay. Let us know if you have other theories!
It’s always a learning experience for us - which is part of the adventure.
David