Far out mate  .. just seems you just

had a bit of a bad luck run . Least everyone 

is safe . Cheers pirate .

Not good about the problems. It sucks when a trip away is cut short like that. Main thing your all home safe and in tact . Mechanical problems can be fixed it just stinks that you have to wait so long for the part

Handy read, easy to question some maintenance and servicing in todays expensive world.

Hopefully the next trip makes up for it.

This report gives us a few things to think about. I still prefer the old style battery 1 and 2 and running them separated.

I needed a couple of bolts for my yammie and the dicks at Yamaha Australia said about three months delivery. I got them online from the states in eight days and probably half the price.

look forward to seeing Sealure again next year. 

Crano, just a thought on batteries and state of charge. Do you have a voltage display active on a sounder or plotter? Almost all units will have a setting which allows you to display voltage and considering you are looking at them all the time anyway, you should be able to pick up if you aren't getting a charging voltage. You then don't need to be a full bottle on the intricacys of VSR set-up/function to know that your batteries are being charged by the outboard.

Steve

 I can't bring myself to turn off the outboard offshore anymore due to a few too many near misses, your story brings back those memories - but that's a tricky issue!

One of those memories being about 40nm out from exxy behind Long Island and having the starter motor go at about 4pm whilst i was with a guy that hardly ever boat fished and was pretty green. We were meant to camp at Long and were not being able to get anyone on radio. Thankfully got 1 bar of reception to get a message off with coords and a mate came and towed us to the muirons with his 6 ppl on board at about 8 knots using every bit of spare fuel he had. He then handed us over to Azura the game boat to be towed and we got back to just before the golf course as a random front hit. Then had to get a lift back to bundegi to get the car and trailer. An afternoon/evening that lives in my boating memories nearly every trip out.

Dang!  Swiss cheese event right there....  multiple issues coming to light.

Spending money on a proper battery monitoring system i believe is a worthy investment.

After i had one of my 2 starter batteries drop a cell while at home (lucky i checked prior to a trip out), i decided to invest in a fairly comprehensive battery monitoring system, and at the same time kicked off a little project to rework the electrics on my boat. 

Prior to this i had both rectifiers on the outboard go, and it only came to my attention when i was 100km offshore deep dropping and started getting low voltage alarms on my plotter, which added to the justification.

I now have a house battery in addition to my 2 starter batteries which feeds a power conditioner to supply clean power to my electronics (in response to the rectifier failures to avoid AC from the outboard alternator cooking my electronics).

All batteries have Victron smart shunts, and i have added the associated temp sensors.  I added solar panels to the cabin roof connected via a CTEK D250SA which will keep all batteries topped up (starter batteries get a top up once the house battery is full).  I even splurged on a CerboGX which i have configured to alarm under certain conditions, and is networked to my plotter.

Pretty much eveything electrical on the boat is monitored while on the water.  Every now and again i just bluetooth to the smart shunts to check on the battery status to confirm everything is healthy, and the solar panels are doing their thing.

The fuel issue is a tricky one, but i think you've nailed it on the head when you said you missed that the motor wasn't getting full revs at WOT.  This is where being familiar with how your boat operates is so important, and when something doesn't feel right, investigate promptly.  I have a couple of scenarios i can relate to.  One was fuel related when the outboard would intermittently stutter and kind of skip a beat, i felt it, but the crew on board were none the wiser when i asked.  Knowing it had to be something fuel related because i had changed filters and hoses a few weeks prior, i went investigating, and after several days of scouting around, it was a little airpocket in the LP fuel filter under the cowling, after several goes to properly bleed the fuel system, all sorted.  Another time, i noticed the outboard revs were increasing more rapidly after about 3000rpm, like the prop was not gripping.  No seaweed, no prop damage, had me baffled until i got home.  My boat has a little transducer plate off the transom along the keel, somehow that plate got bent down, so as i built up speed, it was disurbing the flow over the prop.  Knocked back in place, all sorted.

I can almost guarantee that even Yamaha techs would not go into inspecting the HP pump in the VST.  I've done it once on my Suzuki and i simply cleaned the filter (it was actually more of a strainer than filter) because i lived remote and didn't have easy access to parts, but that was when i changed the HP fuel filter, which Suzuki recommends at 1000hrs, but don't recall anything about inspecting or replacing the HP fuel pump at any point.  I can't help but feel your incident is an unfortunate and unlikley scenario, and changing the pump every 3 years or 300 hours might be a bit OTT.