Titusville RR Bridge

Port Canaveral Bridge

We get up at 4:45 have showers and leave the dock at 6:00AM for the bridge opening. Unfortunately the next Bridge, the Christa McAuliffe bridge, does not open because of commuter traffic so we have to anchor an hour to wait. 

 

Breakfast stop past the Lock

So we have our breakfast stop. After we pull up the anchor and head for the bridge our engine dies again. We are able to find a safe place to anchor. I tell Sea-Vu-Play to go ahead and not wait for us, nothing they can do. Worst case we call Tow BoatUS. I have a back up fuel pump, that I use for fuel transfer, so I install that pump and remove the old one. I know it was waning, but when I test it, it does not pump at all. Since our fuel tank is higher than the engine we can run the tank below half full without a functioning fuel pump. That could be the cause of our problems. Anyways, the engine starts right up and it looks like we have a fix. The Bridge operator was very nice and open up for us, obviously heard my radio conversations with Sea-Vu-Play about our engine problems. We are soon on the ICW heading north into 20 mph winds.

Just as we go through the Addison Point Draw Bridge the engine stops. SOB ! We quickly unfurl the jib and call the Bridge operator not to close the bridge because our engine died and the high winds are pushing us back into the bridge. He closes it anyways, asshole ! We can not sail off left or right, because there are power line poles and guide wires on the northside of the bridge blocking us from tacking in either direction. We look to be screwed. I decide to try restarting the engine since we are running out of options. The engine starts right up without any problems. What the hell ! We continue on our way without the engine skipping a beat. A couple hours later the engine is still running fine and we find a very protected anchorage just north of Titusville. I still can not find anything wrong with the fuel system or engine. I am getting good fuel flow. The only other thing I can think of is our fuel is contaminated. So I decide to go into the Titusville Marina and replace all our fuel the next day