San Blas shoals

Interesting day for us. We were coastal cruising on our way to a place called Saledup from Caretta Bay. Navionics is notoriously inaccurate in the San Blas area. So we supplement with an excellent custom chart and a guide book. Compare the charts and Google Earth image. All 3 images show the same spot but the 2 charts disagree. In any event, we were tacking upwind for about 3 hours in 17-18 knots, with 1 reef tucked in the mainsail. As we were trying to maintain specific courses, Pinecone was pretty highly heeled at times. See photo. As we re-approached land in an area of various shoal water and some breaking waves, we prepared to furl the solent and motorsail. The engine cranked like normal but wouldn’t turn over. Of course, repeated the start sequence again and again and same result. As hard bits abound, like a lee shore and protruding reefs and sailing among these obstacles without an engine, I must admit my anxiety skyrocketed. We were quickly running out of real estate. Before we left, we had identified a backup anchorage and placed a few waypoints in the chartplotter in case we didn’t feel good about the first anchorage plan. Note this isn’t like the BVI for example, where everything is all been figured out, every approach, every reef, every depth and condition and weather consideration and everyone has the information available. This area of the San Blas, the more remote, completely undeveloped eastern end is nothing like that. Fortunately, the alternate anchorage was a few miles downwind of our position and we spun Pinecone around and headed into a long quiet bay called Escosas. At that moment I thought of Doug Goldhirsch’s admonition regarding engines on a sailboat - it is a sailboat, you can always sail her! We furled the Solent, prepped the main to be dropped at the same moment the anchor went in. We executed this plan flawlessly, the anchor caught and we rounded up and were safe and secure. Now to figure out our completely reliable and still relatively new Yanmar. We pulled the manual out and futzed with a few things and decided maybe the fuel is somehow clogged or air gapped due to the high heeling angles stirring up some tank debris from having sat in a marina for 9 months. So we bled the manual bleeder and seemed to get some bubbles out until clear fuel ran and voila, on the 2nd cranking attempt, she purred to life. We are spent! And relieved!