Pensacola FL Sailing Blog - sailingnightwatch

The other day my dock mate was having some work done on his boat including checking out his engine wiring harness. He has this tachometer that runs more on the state of engine charge instead of RPM. Sounds like a wiring problem, so it was being checked out. Somewhere around 7 PM I heard the engine start. I made a mental note to ask how he got maintenance workers to work past 5 PM. Around 8:30 PM I get a nock on the hull and it is the owner and he asked if I had seen the workers because the engine was running and the boat was locked up. He opened the boat and found a heavy diesel fuel smell. He tried to shut down the engine using the shut down lever, but it would not move.His engine is under the berth in the aft stateroom. Upon opening the engine cover there is fuel squirting onto the glow plug and the fitting is melted. Most of the wiring harness is melted and the throttle and shutdown cables are fused together. The engine is just humming away as happy as can be. He used a screwdriver to pry the shutdown handle into action.In the past year, the engine had been overhauled and while it was out of the boat, the engine space had been repainted and reinsulated. The insulation directly above the glow plug was melted and soot was spread around the engine compartment. It looked like there had been a small fire that thankfully went out.Everyone has been contacted and now it is time to wait for the insurance adjuster. There was obviously a short in the wiring. This is the second time I have known engines to start up by themselves. Both were caused by shorts in the wiring harness. The first one was on an Endeavor 37 that was tied beside a Hunter that took a major lightning strike and it was believed that the lightning had jumped onto the endeavor and caused a short that took about 24 hours to cause the problem. Both boats have the same engines installed. As this develops we will continue the saga.