jkenan
09-09-2005, 11:10 AM
The other day I motored 25 miles up the ICW from Beafort NC up to the Neuse against a 4 knot current. I motored for about 5 hours with the throttle close to wide open and made good headway (thanks to my Indigo prop) with no trouble from the engine at all (OP remained steady at 40PSI). Once out of the ICW I needed to cross the Neuse in a 30 knot NE wind, so I decided to motor sail with 2 reefs in the main, for the reasons 1) to steady the boat in the chop, and 2) to provide some insurance for headway if the engine did fail (lots of shoals around there). On a starboard tack, this caused the boat to heel to port and after about 5 minutes of motor sailing in this fashion, my OP/Temp buzzer went off. With the OP guage now reading close to zero (and normal temp), I shut the engine off immediately. Now sailing with no engine power, I put the helm on autopilot and went below. All my oil was in the bilge, and one of the quick-release screws on the impeller housing of my (new) MMI water pump was loose. I tightened it down, checked oil level which was low, added oil, restarted (thankfully everything sounded good, nothing burnt out as far as I can tell), and OP came back up to 40 and didn't change while I continued motoring at the same heel angle with no problem for the next 45 minutes.
Any ideas what caused this, and what I should do to prevent this from happening again? I can't image losing that much oil from the impellar housing so quickly, although I did detect some oil on the underside of the pump and nowhere else on the engine.
Thanks.
John
Any ideas what caused this, and what I should do to prevent this from happening again? I can't image losing that much oil from the impellar housing so quickly, although I did detect some oil on the underside of the pump and nowhere else on the engine.
Thanks.
John