Cabo Cruz Cuba

At 0700hrs on Sunday 11 February, Nicky went ashore to pick up our despatcho from the Guarda Frontera at Pilón.  Forty minutes later we raised the anchor and motored off into a very light wind morning.

We hoisted the mainsail but there was too little wind to sail effectively, so were still motoring after 1¼hrs, when the engine ran down and stopped.  Unrolling the genoa, we started to sail very slowly in the wrong direction, but it gave us the most apparent wind which meant that we had just enough forward motion to have steerage way.  Leaving Nicky at the helm, I went into fault diagnosis mode, beginning with trying an engine restart.  The engine fired up okay but then ran down once more so it was probably a fuel supply issue. I changed the fuel filters and then bled the system of air.

The engine fired up again and ran but if we tried to use normal cruising revs then it faltered and stopped again. I was reluctant to pull the whole fuel system apart completely whilst we were at sea in case we ended up with no engine power at all, so we experimented with using lower RPM settings.  It seemed to keep running at 1800 RPM so we set that and continued towards Cabo Cruz slowly.  An hour later it died again but fired up and ran at 1500 RPM so we continued with that until it played up again at 1400hrs.

When I changed the filters I hadn’t stripped down the diesel bug separator because the last time I had done that it had been a real faff and had needed all sorts of pipes and brackets to be taken apart. There was a high risk of damaging something a losing the fuel supply to the engine.  But needs must and the repeated engine failure meant that it was the logical next place for a partial blockage in the fuel supply line.  Actually this time the diesel bug separator bowl was not seized and it came apart surprising easily.  It had some diesel bug debris inside it so I cleaned that out and we got the engine running steadily again at 1500 RPM.  The plan was to use that setting to get us to the anchorage where I could then pull apart all of the fuel supply lines and clear them properly.

Our jury-rigged fuel supply: the engine was now supplied with fuel supplied from the green jerry can rather than the main tank

The jerry can wedged into position with the sail cover
and cushions and then some lines tied to stop if from moving

The plan nearly worked but as we motored just to the south of the lighthouse at Cabo Cruz the engine started to falter again.  It was just not running reliably enough for us to pick our way between the reefs in the shallow entrance to the anchorage.  So, we sailed very slowly again, once more in the wrong direction so that we weren’t rolling too much, whilst I disconnected fuel pipes in turn to fault diagnose.  The main supply pipe was partially blocked!  This was going to be too slow to deal with at sea, and the sun was only a couple of hours from setting so we needed to be making our way into the anchorage or preparing for a night at sea.  Rather than the latter, we pulled out some spare fuel hose and a handful of connectors and jubilee clips.  Using a connector that fitted the fuel filter housing I hooked up the spare pipe and provided a new fuel supply for the engine from one of the diesel jerry cans we carry on deck.  After bleeding the fuel lines, the engine worked perfectly and the jerry can provided enough fuel for us to get into the anchorage.  It wasn’t a perfect system because the fuel system was dumping excess unused diesel from the injectors into the main fuel tank and not back into the jerry can, but it gave us enough breathing space to safely get into the anchorage.

Approaching Cabo Cruz – anchor at the ready!

With the engine running again, we made our way through the break in the reef and through the shallows on the landward side.  Throughout we kept the anchor ready to drop immediately in case the engine failed again but, happily, we didn’t need to.

Only one other yacht anchored off Cabo Cruz

We had only ever planned this as a passage night stop and since the area is very shallow anchored a long way off the town.  Our cruising guide suggested that if we were only passing through then we didn’t need to go ashore to check in with the Guarda Frontera, which was a good thing as that meant that I could focus on the engine problem.

It seems that no-one had told the Guarda Frontera this as they rowed out to check our papers – a very long row for them. Such a long row in fact, that one of the party had a huge blister on the palm of his hand which Nicky dressed and bandaged for him.  None of the 3 really spoke English but our knowledge of Spanish for the questions they were likely to ask had improved over the past few days and sign language covered most of the rest.  As ever, the formalities took a long time and Nicky vowed to make up a sheet in English and Spanish answering all their likely questions which we could just hand out to the Guarda officers at our next ports of call.  Formalities complete, they stamped our transit papers both in and out and left them with us, saving themselves a long row the following morning.  However, they requested that we called them on the VHF radio when we departed.

With the Guarda team away, I checked all the fuel pipes checked for blockages and blown them through.  Once more, the engine was able to work drawing fuel from the main tanks but we really needed to get into the fuel tank to see what nasties lay inside.  It looked suspiciously like we had picked up a case of diesel bug in our fuel which isn’t too surprising given the high percentage of biodiesel that is now being mixed into marine diesel.  Hopefully, the work I had done on this passage would be enough to get us to our next  anchorage where we could open up the fuel tanks for a proper inspection.

Cabo Cruz, Cuba