Suffering Succotash

We suffered a bit of a setback today. We left Thurston Bay in time to meet slack at Seymour Narrows and continued on up Discovery Passage. Shortly before passing Campbell River southbound, the engine suddenly quit. Or so it seemed. It turns out it was still running, but at idle. My first thought was that we'd neglected to switch tanks and it had run out of fuel.  But since we'd just filled our tanks in Port McNeill, that was clearly not the problem. I opened up the engine room to have a look at the throttle lever and found that the cable connected to the throttle lever had become disconnected. As soon as I put a finger on the linkage, a part popped off and rattled across the engine room, never to be seen again. Well, alrighty then. 

Next I wondered if the propeller was still pushing the boat forward. It was. So at least we weren't dead in the water. I pulled the throttle lever up until the engine rpm was at cruising speed and tied it in place with a piece of cord. We were back in business, although unable to easily control the engine speed. At one point, while passing the Campbell River ferry terminal, the ferry darted out in front of us and, having no way to quickly slow the boat, I turned in a circle instead.  The ferry boat captain must have wondered if a crazy person was at the helm. 

We wound our way through Desolation Sound and arrived at our anchorage in the early evening where I removed the cord on the throttle arm and we idled in. The engine still goes forward and backward at idle, so we were able to anchor without much fuss. 

This morning I managed to rig up something a little more elegant with the hope that we'll have control of the engine speed with the throttle arm. We'll see. We'll leave to meet up with Sam in Mink Island Cove in about ten minutes.