Black Smoke

On the first day of our journey from Rhode Island, we saw black smoke coming out of the starboard engine if it was running at 2,000 RPM or more. One of the pros of a catamaran is that there are 2 engines, so even though our starboard engine couldn't go full throttle, we still had the port side engine. With only one healthy engine, our max current-dependent speed was around 10.5 knots. It took us 13 days to get from Rhode Island to our dock in Sebastian, Florida. With 2 healthy engines, we likely could've made it in a week, putting in as many hours a day that we did (12-15 hour days).

Ben thought it was smoking because it wasn't getting enough air in the engine, likely because of the turbo. Then he thought it was the fuel filter, then the wastegate of the turbo. At each anchorage, he would check the engines, turbo, filters, oil, diesel... maybe more or less, I'm not sure. I do know that it was messy and called for a lot of gloves, paper towels, and trash bags in a hurry. (That was my job.)

This is a weird perspective, but Ben is working on the starboard engine. To the left of his head, is the step Moose and Roo use to climb up into their bed. The white flat part with wood edging (above that black snake-looking thing) is the platform that their bed rests on when the bed is down.

Bear sleeps over the port engine while Moose and Roo sleep over the starboard one. To access and check the engines, Ben has to lift the kids' beds and that unmakes the beds, ruining my neat bedmaking skills. I quickly had to get over the presentation of their beds once I realized this would be happening daily. Fixing the sheets after lifting the beds for each check was just wasting my time.

Every time Ben lifted the beds and did something on the engine I was ever so grateful for his diesel mechanic training. It gave me peace of mind, but with each f-bomb he dropped, I couldn't help but wonder if our problem was beyond his scope.

When Ben exhausted all options, he searched for someone who could help us once we got to Sebastian. He found a marine diesel engine mechanic who was willing to come take a look for us and then accidentally came across a Yanmar mechanic, which was perfect for our Yanmar engine.

Yanmar guy ordered and replaced our turbo. Four miles into the trip to North Palm Beach, there was black smoke again. The mechanic was on his way to meet Ben at a restaurant's dock and told Ben to dive under the boat and check that there wasn't anything stuck on the propellers. He found nothing.

When the Yanmar guy arrived, he vacuumed out the turbocharger intercooler and found a shop rag in the engine. Someone had serviced the turbo and closed the rag in there limiting the airflow into the engine, which had been the source of our problem.

That black thing was once a blue shop towel. It is solely responsible for freaking us out and slowing us down! (Red and black thing is a flashlight, not found in the turbo.)

Once Ben left the dock, he was able to get up to 17 knots with no black smoke! Problem solved.