More detail
For the first half of the trip back to the airport the choice was fly over a city or around the edge over water, so I obviously stayed over the water. As we chugged back home the engine was intermittently stumbling but still maintaining power. At this point I decided not to touch anything on the theory that I did not want to mess with what was working. I told the tower I was doing a straight in on the runway that was basically aligned with the track back to the airport and starting to feel relatively sanguine when the engine without warning quit cold. I was startled enough to do nothing and after maybe 2 seconds the engine roared back to life. It ran for maybe 5 seconds and then quit again. Again I froze for a second and the cycle repeated itself. The third time with no action on my part the engine stayed running.
At this point I was about lined up with the runway but not quite in gliding range. I needed to go about 1.5 to 2 nm further to make the runway power off ( the Nanchang is not a good glider). I was over a 4 lane divided highway with a moderate amount of traffic. There were no other landable areas in gliding range ( forest or houses). The other option was to turn right towards the shore line of the bay that my track was basically paralleling and which was in gliding range.
What would you do ?