Our Runaway Diesel | Sailing Avocet 

Had the same engine in my Morgan Outisland ketch, and had the same issue. Having grown up on a farm i recognized immediately what was happening and used a towel to shut it down. It's a terrifying thing for sure and im glad you got it shut down without injury. After assessing my situation i rebuilt the entire engine and had a mechanicel peice engineered to cutoff the airflow that led back to my cockpit binnacle. There are several companies now making them and they are a very worthwhile investment.

Now this is an entertaining video. Full of action, very well filmed...overall brilliantly done👏🏻 Glad no-one got hurt... especially Cleo baby...

I watched most of your vids and you are a master. You have one of the nicest boats I've ever seen.

Scary situation, I witnessed a runaway diesel at the dock and it was terrifying. You both handled the situation so well!

Terrifying!!!! I’m so glad you guys made it through! Love following your story! 😊

That was intense. Great recovery to say the least. Luckily you could stop the engine by blocking the air flow. I have looked at our Yanmar turbo intake and wondered how we could do the same in a situation like yours. So glad to hear it didn't happen again and you arrived safely.

Thanks for the helpful information. Glad you caught things before troubles got worse

You guys constantly amaze me! Great job handling a scary situation😅

I too have a Perkins 4108 in my yatch I will now be more observant of oil levels

Great job getting the situation under control in a level headed manner! Looking forward to seeing the next part!

I’ve always wondered about your injection pump since this happened. My Perkins Prima is so wildly different, especially the Bosch injection pump. When I was getting mine running for the first time, the stop solenoid on the injection pump wasn’t hooked up. I was able to use a small plate to stop it and shut the engine down. After the rebuild, I forgot to hook up the stop solenoid and I didn’t have raw water hooked up so I was freaking out but I used a rag as I’ve been told a big enough diesel intake can rip your skin off. Glad y’all got that worked out. Great advice, don’t use your hand to stop a runaway!

I really had no idea this was a thing! You both handled it very well!

W O W . . . Glad you made it through all of those catastrophes seemingly unscathed..!!! Good show. 😎👏👍🥳

Professional level Immediate Action with the diesel. Very cool under pressure. Great public awareness video about it too. Renaissance couple.

I had my Perkins 4.108 injection pump rebuild twice. One month after the second rebuild the engine started "making" oil again (leaking diesel into the sump) I grew tired of it and just repowered the boat with new Vetus. The Perkins had other issues too though

Truly helpful!

very informative video. thanks!

Another pro quality and informative video. It is always good to see your beautiful faces! This was really helpful to me as a woman sailor. I have an amazing marine electrician for a partner who handles most of the engine maintenance, but that is something I want to become competent at and this really helped. I think we'll even test stopping the engine manually so we know how to do it before it is an emergency.

Great information 👍

Great video! I love how you guys jump into problem solving mode and don’t panic, great example for us all!

Some good advice and tips there for the Perkins. The Volvo 2020 is a Perkins these engines have a habit of running away under certain conditions. Sail Safe Guys, Ant & Cid.

Same thing happened, Volvo 18 hp revs out of the blue to the max RPM, unstoppable. Clutch off/on and it run down

Just a thought or two. When you luck out again with a speed boat sail. 😅, take out a sharpie, do a inspection of the boat. Go out your face on all spots makeing the most noise. Noise is a early sign. Like a bad heart beat. Mark that noise spot. Write it in a log book. For this reason. When your board on the hook, and you've had all the sundowner bottie calls, your back can handle ( sailing joke ), check out the areas again but now there not under load. Tighten a screw, pound and glue a shim in, weld a stronger support. Add a new brace. U get the point. U should buy a hand held temp gauge gun . The ones you point at the motor, then you know if shes running hot. Checking the motor temp, daily , will teach you how she feeling , what's wrong before, what wrong, blows up in your face. Also, the temp, gauge hand held. Is great to tell you if your mate is horny, high heat, in the galley means the boats going to be rocking dont come a knocking.😅 again a sailing joke. But really you can take the sheets temp, hahaha. 😊. Your both smart... but dont think going over drills of the what if. Crap, man over board, fire drill, you wake and there 2 feet of water in the boat. Dont just talk, like the navy, for fun do the drill. Touch the life raft, go grab the ditch bag and drag it on deck. Know that in seconds, you can have the life vest, on and the E perg, really. Most, of those who, have to ditch , die, there not ready, they forgot where everything is. You hit a sunken, 40 foot container, at night, just right, the whole side of a hull can be ripped out in seconds, boat fills, you wake up thinking it's a wet dream Haha, good luck. Also, have pirate drills. They sneak up at 4am, no sound. 10 blacks with guns.they will kill you for the boat..

turbo diesels do this more often than non turbo diesels. Ones with turbos should be 8 inches higher than engine for marine use especially on a monohull sail boat. I didn't see a turbo on yours so it flooded and added diesel to the oil. I would remove and clean the glow plugs maybe even change them. This also happens when rings are really worn and diesel can leak past the rings into the oil.

Very good episode!!! Well explained

Thanks, I didn't know about runaway diesel engines. After all my years of farming; shrug ;)

Well done and good job on the video.

💯 ...primo! ...❤⚓🖖

Thank You for the runaway Perkins video. My 4.108 blows a little blue smoke at startup but clears up when she warms up. When you had runaway did your engine blow blue smoke? Thanks

👍👍👍

Man you guys got lucky but you where so on top of it most people panic and the engine blows y’all did great

You were very lucky really you should be at the bottom of the ocean really but you caught it in time and you got the engine to stop.

why not just get a completely different injection pump? like one off a cummins 12 valve(cp3 belt driven or crank gear drive P-Pump)

Put my hand over a runaway 2x after high pressure pump was rebuilt wrong by a company doing it for 50 years , happened on a friends Catalina with Kubota engine no issues. I then fought with them on the phone until they came out and agreed they put it back together wrong

If you don’t use my drone footage in an upcoming video I’m going to curl up in a fetal position and cry myself to sleep.

Happened back in November and you're only able to talk about it now? You sound like you're talking about a death in the family or some sort of terrible medical problem, it's just a runaway engine, no big deal. I'll tell ya people these days are so weird, such drama queens