I have a '76 Islander 22. It has sat since 1998. Last year we took it out of storage and redone basically everything on it. (Floor, electronics, rebuilt carb) We left the 7 yr old gas in it, topped off with fresh gas. We took it out to a local lake to test run it. Everything was fine, engine ran great. Then we took it out to the Great Lakes (Frankfort) fishing. The first day out on the water was pretty ruff, so we decided to come in. On our way in the engine started to sputter and stall out, could not get it restarted. Switched tanks and it also wouldn't start. So we got towed in. Later on in the day we added a few bottles of dry gas to the tanks and filled up. Next day was not as ruff, after about 6 hours of fishing we decided to come in and as we tried to increase the throttle the engine started to die out, so we reduced the throttle and trolled in slow speed. We do have a water separator on the boat; there was about 1/4 cup water in it. The boat has a 4 cylinder in it. Last week we took it out of storage again, hooked up everything and started at home with cups on, started perfect and ran smooth. Here are the questions??? Does anyone know why it ran like it did? Water in the gas? Should I drain the tanks? (2 tanks 36 gal total) pull the tanks out and completely drain them?? Does anyone know how the fuel pick-up in on the tanks? I want to make sure the problem is fix correctly before heading out on the big waters. Thanks for any help.
