entire cruising season. It started about half way down the Baja Coast when the engine slowed and finely stopped. Two weeks later it happened on the crossing from Cabo to PV. It did it again when we were leaving the fuel dock and again pulling into the fuel dock a few months later. All this time I was thinking that it had to be something other then the fuel filters but during this time I tightened every connection in the fuel line. I removed the generator from the common pick up on the tank and installed it's own. I drained and cleaned the fuel tanks and refilled with fresh, filtered fuel and changed all the crush washers on in the fuel system. The hard thing about it was the that there was no way to tell when it was going to happen. Sometimes the engine would run a month and you would think you had finely fixed it only to have it stop as you are pulling away from a fuel dock. Or worse, pulling into a fuel dock! Every time it happened I had to drain the filters and refill them, bleed the engine completely and then restart. Even after I got really good at it it still took time, made a mess and spoiled the day.

The engine had been running without problems for a couple of weeks prior to bringing her back up the coast to San Diego so off we went. We departed La Paz and motored into the wind all the way to Cabo and of course the wind shifted and we rounded Cabo with the wind directly into our face. The harbor at Cabo San Lucas was closed because of the G4 Summit so we were forced to sail on by and just as we reach Cabo Falso then engine died again. We went through the procedure and got her started only to have the engine shut down 20 minutes later. Again and again, it shut down over the next 24 hours but we finely figured out that if we got the throttle pulled back in time and the engine RPM's slow enough soon enough the air bubble would burble through and not stop the engine. The problem was you had to be right there with your hand on the throttle almost to have enough time or the engine would still die.

Finely we arrived at Mag Bay and went through the entire engine again looking for a leak and, of course, found nothing. While we were messing around I switched the engine over to the secondary filter system. I was about to change it back over when I decided to just leave it and see what happened. Every time prior, I had always changed back to the primary filter system because it had two filters, a 10 and a .2 micron . The secondary only had a 10 micron. I decided to leave it on the secondary system and do you know what? We didn't have another problem all the way to San Diego. After a few weeks in San Diego I decided to test my system with air so I bought myself the required fuel line, pressure gauge, valves and pump to pressurize the system. I let it set for several hours and didn't loose a pound.

Now I was really scratching my head. I did what I hate to do and just said screw it and started pitching money at it. I pulled out the old filtering system and bought new Racor filters and fittings and rebuilt my system with new parts. I haven't had a problem in over a year. One of the filter housings had a small crack or air leak some where or somehow that drove me nuts for almost a year and a half. The take away from this is that it might not be the engine at all and sometimes the fuel filter housings might look and test OK but still not be any good. I would connect a separate fuel line and tank for a while just so you can rule this kind of thing out just to see. Good luck, I feel your pain.