Help! Someone who knows about boats and boat engines, please!

[E G Logan]

I have a single-handed sailor competing in a race, on a small yacht (sailboat), which also has an engine. The boat is found drifting, the sailor disappeared, fate unknown, ?days/?weeks after his last radio broadcast, which was ostensibly* from a very different location.

Much uncertainty and speculation. Then the boatyard/boatperson/salvager responsible for checking out the vessel reports the engine is missing a vital – small, easily removable but necessary – part. This shifts the focus firmly to... suicide or murder.

Any ideas for what that part would be?? Or, is there something like a fuel pipe that could be easily sabotaged??

*Can a false location be logged in that way? I believe it can, but just checking...

This character isn't the main point of the story – merely another strange death or disappearance in a particular place – so I don't need great detail, but I don't want to get anything stupidly wrong.

 

[Barbara]

easily removable but necessary – part. This shifts the focus firmly to... suicide or

I'm not sure removing an engine part would flag as a potential suicide. Sabotage, yep, murder yep, carelessness from whomever worked on the engine. But in the eyes of cops, or anyone, I'm not sure they'd investigate suicide if that's what they'd found, because that's not a regular MO for a suicidal person. Could that person simply vanish from the boat? I've heard of people committing suicide by simply swimming out to sea.

 

[E G Logan]

I've heard of people committing suicide by simply swimming out to sea.

Oh, dear. You've just torpedoed my:

" He spoke slowly, with that soft accent, slightly sing-song, and the rather circuitous phrasing of someone whose English was not their first language. But this time he was crystal clear: ‘He took it wi’ him when he jumped. Fer sure.’ "

If the sailor had just disappeared, it could have been as a result of an accident, massive wave, whatever... Some kind of sabotage almost definitely rules that out.

 

[Barbara]

Does it have to happen at sea?

I'm assuming you need a scenario where it could be either suicide or murder, so maybe consider tablets, and whether or not the victim is able to administer it themselves.

Hang on I'll PM you....

 

[E G Logan]

There is a third possibility that I'd like to keep: that the sailor just abandons ship and sails off, with an accomplice in another boat. They live the life of Riley somewhere on his sponsors' money. But he is presumed dead.

He would then have been sabotaging the boat himself to look as if he had gone unhinged after so long alone at sea, and jumped...

 

[Barbara]

He would then have been sabotaging the boat himself to look as if he had gone unhinged after so long alone at sea, and jumped...

I've heard of extreme sports people who start to hallucinate during endurance events do all sorts of weird things. Hypothermia makes people take their clothes off despite being in the process of freezing to death. The person could do that and jump. But that doesn't look like murder and I can't quite see tampering with the boat turn into a suicide case.

 

[James Charles]

I have a single-handed sailor competing in a race, on a small yacht (sailboat), which also has an engine. The boat is found drifting, the sailor disappeared, fate unknown, ?days/?weeks after his last radio broadcast, which was ostensibly* from a very different location.

Much uncertainty and speculation. Then the boatyard/boatperson/salvager responsible for checking out the vessel reports the engine is missing a vital – small, easily removable but necessary – part. This shifts the focus firmly to... suicide or murder.

Any ideas for what that part would be?? Or, is there something like a fuel pipe that could be easily sabotaged??

*Can a false location be logged in that way? I believe it can, but just checking...

This character isn't the main point of the story – merely another strange death or disappearance in a particular place – so I don't need great detail, but I don't want to get anything stupidly wrong.

I'm not quite following your premise.

But, a friend of our's sister, an avid scuba diver here in Hawaii, mailed suicide notes to her adult children, where she said she went diving and weighted herself down, took some substance to make her sleep, went our to the depths (it's 15k feet deep a mile off shore) and turned her air off (per the notes). They never found her body.

 

[Aethalope]

There is a third possibility that I'd like to keep: that the sailor just abandons ship and sails off, with an accomplice in another boat. They live the life of Riley somewhere on his sponsors' money. But he is presumed dead.

He would then have been sabotaging the boat himself to look as if he had gone unhinged after so long alone at sea, and jumped...

Am I right in understanding that you want it to appear as if he committed suicide or was murdered as a plot point? And that there needs to be some concrete (albeit planted) evidence that this happened?

Have you checked out the story of Kaz II? It was found drifting near the Great Barrier Reef and it wasn't immediately clear what had happened (sort of a modern day Mary Celeste). I guess you are looking for something more conclusive.

I can't think of someone taking an engine part to suggest foul play. If I wanted to sabotage I might siphon off the fuel after they had filled the tanks, but there's no way someone could later spot that.

How about having signs of a violent struggle on board? That might be easy to fake. Smash some cabinets, scatter some blood, etc., then hop onto his accomplice's boat.

 

[JohnBertel]

If the empty boat is found I suppose it will be thought to be an accident, suicide or, more exotic, sailing off in another boat, kidnapped and/or murdered.

But I don't see how sabotage of the engine would strengthen the case for either of these possibilities. It would be a rather ineffective way to commit murder esp because the sailor has a radio.

 

[E G Logan]

Am I right in understanding that you want it to appear as if he committed suicide or was murdered as a plot point? A

Absolutely.

If the empty boat is found I suppose it will be thought to be an accident, suicide or, more exotic, sailing off in another boat, kidnapped and/or murdered.

Exactly.

You got it. I want to leave all the possibilities open.
I don't need too much detail, just no mistakes.

This guy is a red herring, a plot device. A red herring because if dead, his death is anomalous and has nothing to do with the other deaths on this island... BUT it's a plot point, the anomaly that points up all the similarities between the other deaths, some historic.

And we never do know. At least one character believes he's lying on a beach somewhere hot, having scammed everybody.

 

[JohnBertel]

This shifts the focus firmly to... suicide or murder.

want to leave all the possibilities open.

If understand, you are looking for an element to narrow the possibilities down to murder or suicide. Or at least make them the most plausible explanations. Maybe other solutions are more effective than sabotage. Traces of blood? In patterns or places where it seems unlikely to be caused by an accident. A bullet or a bullet hole?

 

[Bloo]

How about something ambiguous? The Coast Guard finds the vessel with dry fuel tank or tanks (some boats have more than one). But how did the pilot run out of gas diesel? Maybe he didn't; it was staged to look like it.

Imagine, someone else on the boat incapacitates the pilot. Then another vessel shows up, and transfers all of the yacht's fuel into their tanks. Then the vessel motors off leaving the ghost ship behind.

Suicide explanation: Pilot deliberately runs the tank(s) dry in open water, then goes for a long final swim.

But wait...

Foul play explanation: The pilot filled up the 500-gallon tank before heading out. There is no leak, so where did all the fuel go? It would have to be run continuously at high speed to use it all.

Will any of this work within your plot?

 

[E G Logan]

an element to narrow the possibilities down to murder or suicide.

to suggest either, or both (not together!), and at the same time rule nothing else out. (Like a scam by the sailor, or a hijack, or something supernatural.)
A totally unexplained disappearance, as @Aethelope says, like the Mary Celeste.

But thank you all for your brain-bashing on this one. It's only for something that's little more than an aside in the plot,.