Monday 20th April 2026

Just coming up to Antigua

Sailing the direct route is all very well, but the wind shadows in the lee of the islands stretch for miles – and they’re not even proper shadows: one minute you’re in a flat calm, the next, you’re pulling down two reefs, and the boat’s putting her gunwale under anyway.

I woke up grumbling: “This is worse than the Doldrums.”

That was when I discovered I had engine trouble. I’d noticed it a few weeks ago – just as a momentary loss of power, the sort of “cough” which tells you it’s time to change one of the fuel filters. I have a schedule for this: once a year for the main filter, once every six months for the pre-filter. Of course, I never get as far as the reminder popping up on my phone. There’s always a problem before that, and changing filters is my go-to solution for all things mechanical.

It doesn’t always solve the problem, but changing filters has to be a good thing, doesn’t it?

Anyway, this time, I never did get around to it before because I had Hugo with me, and we were always too busy going out for meals. This time, the engine – after any number of warning hiccups – actually stopped.

I changed the little Racor pre-filter: The engine ran just long enough to empty it, and then stopped. I changed the main filter.

It might be relevant to mention that the wind was not shrieking in the rigging while all this was going on (if it had been, I would have been sailing). Instead, I was rolling gently but regularly – which at least meant I could match my rhythmic swaying with the jug of diesel in one hand and the open filter in the other.

The fuel only started slopping into the bilges when I had to hold the filter still to screw it on (that is, still relative to the engine, not the rest of the world.)

It all took so much effort and so much time, that if there was any justice, it would have kept running all the way to Cape Capucin and the return of the trade wind.

But there is no justice. After five minutes, the little 21hp Nanni hesitated, thought about it, thought better of it, gasped its last, and died.

I do remember standing there, thinking that I had been asking for trouble, putting all the tools away. I got the spanners out again. Stage Two of fuel starvation involves checking the flow from the tank. Stage Two is not very pleasant.

I have a 50-litre tank. It is tucked away under the port cockpit seat, behind the engine. I believe it has been there since the boat was built in 1973. It has no inspection hatch, no access. There is no way of cleaning it. The time to address this shortcoming would have been when I had the engine out for a new propshaft and cutlass bearing sometime around 2022 – but the boat had been sinking at the time, and I had other things on my mind.

The thing that makes checking the flow from the tank a last resort is that you have to disconnect the pipe from the pre-filter and, if nothing comes out, get down with your head in the engine bay and blow into the pipe (which tastes of diesel – which is very unfair if there isn’t any diesel coming out of it.)

I got down with my head in the engine bay. I got my mouth around the pipe (it reminded me of the straw for the Piña Colada in the beach bar in the Limon Cays – except for the taste.) I blew.

What is supposed to happen is that you blow, and you can hear the bubbles in the tank. Of course, all you are doing is blowing the muck back into the tank so it can block the pipe again (just not today, if you wouldn’t mind).

But this time, nothing happened. No sound of bubbles echoing in the half-empty tank. I blew harder. I blew until I was blue in the face – and received various warning signals that I should stop blowing, but you don’t need to know the details. Anyway, this wasn’t working.

I fetched the dinghy pump. This is a serious implement that came with the defunct True Kit dinghy from New Zealand. It has a pressure gauge that goes up to 14psi. The dinghy pump it was that cleared the blockage in the outlet pipe of the loo in Santa Marta (and caused several people in the marina to think there had been a gas explosion). I attached it to the pipe, sealing the joint with a wodge of gaffer tape the size of my fist.

I pressed down on the pump handle. It wouldn’t go more than halfway. I tried again – wouldn’t even go halfway. The pressure on the gauge rose alarmingly. Suddenly, there was some sort of commotion in the tank. The handle went “clonk” at the end of its run.

I was back in business. I motored placidly the rest up the coast of Dominica (interrupted only by short-lived blasts of 15kts apparent and then back to nothing).

It wasn’t until I switched off for the last time that I noticed the smell – rather like the smell that had accompanied Hugo’s observation: “There’s smoke coming out of the engine.”

There was too. I may have mentioned this before, and on that occasion, the heat exchanger was dry. At least I found a hole in the pipe. This time, there was no explanation – a good job, I keep plenty of coolant – anyway, I was supposed to be awake. At one point, we were only three miles offshore. I needed something to do…