Motor Trouble

© Melanie Neale

Would you buy a boat with motor trouble?

Join us each week as we follow Melanie and Will and their quest for freedom on the high seas in Boat Makes Three...

We made an offer on the Starwind 19 the day after we looked at it, and were surprised when the owner accepted. After that, we spent a while flip-flopping back and forth about it. Were we making a huge mistake? What would we find wrong with it? I even contacted the boat's designer, who, I learned, was also the designer for several other prominent and seaworthy sailboat lines. He gave me a few pointers on things to look for when we reexamined the boat upon pickup, and reassured me that there could only be so much wrong with a 19' boat.

Still, I'm naturally paranoid, so when we arrived in West Palm, I was ready for whatever disaster awaited us. The owner and the broker were standing around a barrel of water, strategically placed under the sailboat's stern so that the outboard motor's lower unit was adequately submerged for a test run. One of the conditions that we had laid out for the purchase was that the motor had to be in proper working order (the owner had sworn to us that it purred like new, but I wasn't about to take his word for it).

"She's all ready for you!" Richard, the broker, greeted us as we pulled up alongside. Both he and the owner seemed eager to complete the transaction.  As I climbed aboard for a final inspection, they both pointed at the motor. I got the message and pulled the cord to start it. It sputtered on, ran for a few seconds, and died.

In my mind, up until now, that had been the deciding factor. If I wasn't happy with the way the motor ran, the boat wasn't going home with us.  A feeling that was half relief and half disappointment swept over me. I started it again. "It's just the choke," the owner said, trying to mask his concern that the deal might not go through. 

"I don't think it is," I said. I let the choke stay open for as long as I thought was healthy for the small outboard, but each time I pushed it back in the motor sputtered - a sign that it simply wasn't getting enough gas under regular running conditions. (Which meant one of two things - a dirty carburetor or an idle-adjust screw that needed to be adjusted.)

We played with the motor for a while, and eventually it stayed on. It was old - almost ten years old - so I knew it wasn't going to run perfectly. And, in a way, a cranky engine seemed like a natural fit to me.  The engine on my last boat never quite ran right, and I grew up with an outboard that needed its carburetor rebuilt at least once every 6 months. So, in spite of myself, I decided not to let the engine bother me. After all, it was a sailboat, right? The engine was just a secondary means of propulsion (albeit an important safety feature). 

So, much to the owner's relief, we didn't change our minds. The paperwork was over in an instant, and the little sailboat was officially ours. The next task was going to be bringing her home on a trailer that wasn't quite road safe (or legal) behind an SUV that had never towed anything before.