Trouble for Miss Henrietta
Richie and Jeff headed out yesterday for the Henrietta’s first day shrimping after a refit. I got a phone call from them at about 8:00 in the morning, and they were having engine problems. The engine was stuck at 1500 RPM’s and they were running out of time before they had to haul back (bring the nets back onboard).
With boats, you don’t really talk about speed as much as engine RPM’s (shrimp boats are slow anyway). The Henrietta is powered with a Detroit Diesel 671. This engine has a max RPM of about 2200 – 2400. When the nets are in the water, the engine should run at about 1500 RPM’s. On the way out, they couldn’t get the engine above 1500 RPM’s. They thought they had got it fixed, put the nets in the water, and then realized that they couldn’t get the engine below 1500. Once a boat is dragging, it has about two hours before the nets are full and you have to haul back. Essentially, they were on a runaway boat with very limited maneuverability.
Jeff called and asked if I would check some forums on the web (quickly), and see if I could figure out a solution to the problem. In the meantime, they had managed to get the engine cut and haul back. Now they were floating powerless and contemplating trying to dock the boat at 1500 RPM’s (very fast without the nets in the water). I checked around, and thought I had the problem pinpointed to the injectors getting hung up. They were working on the engine at the same time and found that the problem was actually with a throttle lever in the governor on top of the engine. They managed to get the engine cranked back up and running (stuck) at a relatively slow 1100 RPM’s. They managed to coordinate the docking procedure with Richie at the helm and Jeff down below cutting the engine at just the right time. Everything worked perfectly.
Richie had a mechanic come out and work on the engine yesterday afternoon, and I believe they went back out this morning. They did catch some nice shrimp on their one drag yesterday; let’s see how things worked out today.
