Friday, August 31. We left for Racine on a picture perfect morning. The lake was calm for the most part and we were traveling with Fid and Deb on See Life.
About 2/3 across the motor gave a loud shudder and there was black smoke from the exhaust. Bob slowed the engine down and went down to check the engine. I called to Deb and Fid who were about 1 1/2 miles ahead of us and they turned around and came back to check us out. They stayed with us the rest of the way until a mile or so from the Racine Harbor and they had to rev their engine before they stopped for the day. That's when ours quit entirely ! So a call to the harbor master resulted in him sending out a Racine county Sheriff's tow for us.
This Sgt. Bill Halliday sure knew what to do and calmly directed us and his assistant Jake Hollow. He maneuvered us so beautifully into the harbor and into the slip which we had reserved. I should also add that this was a free service from the Sheriff's department !
Since there was no mechanics available on this holiday week-end, we came straight on home to the cabin. We'd planned to leave the boat there for a couple weeks anyway so that we could go to Bob's class reunion and tend to some things at the cabin.
Here's what we've learned about the boat. Some Yanmar engines built between 1996 and 2002 had faulty valves and of course, ours falls within the model and serial numbers affected. The mechanic who looked at the boat referred us to the website www.yanmarsettlement.com. So Yanmar is offering extended warranties for these engines...ours had 830 hours or so on it when this happened. So now, the mechanic is trying to get the okay from Yanmar to start taking the motor out before he gets busy with haul-out duties. So we wait. Hopefully, it'll be replaced and we'll be on our way again by the end of September. Until then, we'll post progress.
