During a recent 5 day cruise on my 41DC, I was awakened by the sound of my 7kw Westerbeke gas generator shutting down at about 4am. My first thought was it ran out of gas as that side was showing low on fuel. After refueling later that morning, the generator proved very hard to start. I checked the fuel water seperating filter, and it was full of fuel. Oil and coolant levels were fine. Then I played with the stop switch on the remote panel, and it started, ran for about 5 seconds, and then shut itself down. I found that if I continued to flip the stop button up and down, it would keep running, but seemed to be overspeeding. While it was running, I loaded it, and it came down to the proper rpm and showed proper voltage. It ran fine all day while we were crusing. Then we pulled in to a marina for an overnight stay. The next morning, I fired it again, same problem. However, this time when I tried the same routine as before with the stop switch, the generator oversped, smoked my DVD, and kicked the circuit breaker on the panel a the generator. After resetting the breaker, it would still fire up, run 5 seconds, and then die. I know there are shutdown sensors for speed, temp, and oil. One of these sensors or a faulty stop switch is shutting the engine down. Anybody have any ideas on where to start in troubleshooting this problem?