I guess it's all in how you look at it. We spent last night in Georgetown SC after a pretty good run along the Intercoastal. Pretty much ran with "Miss Penny" a lovely custom 53 Alden out of Palm Beach. Nicest couple - we really enjoyed chatting with them once we both put in. We planned to run to Charleston today (50 miles) but our starboard engine didn't want to start. Tom jumped the battery, got her going and we were off. 10 Miles into our journey the port engine's power dropped dramatically. Tom shut it down and restarted it and everything seemed fine. And then the starboard engine just went dead and was NOT going to restart. While we were both thinking "Good Lord what if the port engine goes out again!!" neither of us dared to speak it out loud. And then the power dropped off on the port engine again. Now, do you shut it down and hope you can restart it again or just keep going at a snail's pace on that last engine? We decided to try to restart it but I was out on the bow with lines ready to tie up to this concrete pier that we were drifting towards, just in case. God bless that little engine that could - it restarted. We kept losing power though and finally just crawled into The Isle of Palms, about 10 miles shy of Charleston. Never been so happy to see a sleepy little town. It's not an engine issue but a battery issue. We're putting all new batteries in the boat just to ward off any future issues and we'll try for Charleston again tomorrow.
Poor Captain, he has a gimpy first mate, a gimpy boat...but he's lucky. We say that because we are reading an article in the local paper about a boat that lost its engines exactly where we were. They ran aground as the tide was going out, ended up listing over while sinking into the mud and had to be rescued by Coast Guard helicopters. See, we are very lucky - it's all in how you look at it.
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