It was our 7-year-old 9.8hp Tohatsu dinghy motor that failed. The one that we'd just paid 600 pesos (about $46 US)* to have overhauled in San Carlos. Turns out, it hadn't been.
* 300 pesos for the cab ride from Guaymas to San Carlos, carrying the dinghy motor; plus 300 pesos for the overhaul.
I know what all you naysayers out there are saying: "Just row your dinghy; get some exercise; you don't need a motor!!" Lookit: we have a 200-lb., 11-foot Caribe that often carries snorkel gear, fishing tackle, a spouse or 2, & occasionally carries massive loads of laundry & groceries. In 20-knot headwinds. Through surf. So forgive us our indulgence in a dinghy motor.
Anyway, when the outboard failed to start in Bahia San Pedro, GB did his best to troubleshoot the problem at anchor. He inspected the outboard's innards,removed what he could & soaked parts in acetone in the hopes that it would be enough to clear whatever clogs there may be in the lines, to get the motor running. Fail. So, thanks to the miracle of Skymate ™ satellite email, we were able to contact the outfit who'd worked on our dinghy motor. They felt our problem might be that bad/old gasoline had clogged the lines & working parts, so GB installed all new parts from one of our 2 emergency replacement kits, and I scrambled around trying to find containers big enough to accommodate over a gallon of "old" gasoline-oil mix** to be replaced by "new" gas-oil mix.
** Difficulty: GB doesn't like to have lots of empty containers aboard; he complains they confuse him and take up too much space — so, every time I try to save a handy container, GB tries to throw it away. Then emergencies happen and GB says he's surprised I don't have the foresight to keep spare containers aboard. Why, yes, we've been together 24 years; how did you know?
I cannibalized some food containers and GB and I switched some more things around & we were able to temporarily store the allegedly "bad" gas. GB retrieved the motor oil from our starboard lazarette, to mix with some fresh-from-the-fuel dock gasoline. When lo, he saw that his one and only container of motor oil had cracked and was rapidly leaking its contents all over everything else in the lazarette. I responded quickly to GB's shrieks and we salvaged as much of the motor oil as we could.
GB cursed our bad luck. I praised the gods — because the weather was mild, we were safely anchored in a nicely sheltered cove, and those crazy Swedes at Malo Yachts had designed a deep sump, walled off from the rest of the starboard lazarette, that was precisely the width of a gallon container of oil and in which we have always stored our oils, cleansers and other toxics. So from my point of view the day was sucktastic but could have been much worse. Our dinghy motor had failed, but only 15 miles from a port with mechanics. We had a mess; but it was a CONTAINED mess – it only took a half hour to mop up & bag the oil-soaked paper towels for later burning on shore (if we could fix the dinghy motor) or for more appropriate disposal in port (if we had to return to San Carlos).
GB tried starting the freshly-cleaned outboard with a batch of fresh gas-and-oil, and…Fail. Back to San Carlos to the competent and skilled mechanic who'd done the outboard overhaul. He examined it yet again (and getting an ailing outboard onshore by dinghy and dropping it off via taxi at at the mechanic's is a minor adventure in itself). Anyway, Mr. Mechanic found that our outboard fails were not the result of a bad carburetor nor bad gas. It was bad motor oil. The gallon of motor oil we'd bought in late 2006, before we started on this madcap adventure of ours. It takes a long time to go through a gallon of motor oil when you mix it with gasoline for your outboard, yet it turns out said motor oil has a shelf life. 70 million years to create; less than 3 years to go stale. Dang.
Anyway, the fresh motor oil in the fuel mix we have now, makes our Tohatsu hum the tune of a properly serviced, professionally overhauled, properly cared-for and -oiled outboard. Life is good. Except for the disposal of the gallon of gasoline contaminated with old oil. That's another story…
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