Engine-gate the story continues

The last update ended the day before Skipper Nigel’s birthday – and whilst we were awaiting news of our engine……

Well, first of all we had a great day on Skipper’s birthday – starting out of course with coffee followed by drinks with friends from the marina, followed by Sunday lunch with another group of friends and the small matter of a football match England were playing in the euros. It was an absolutely great day, we were having such a good time I failed to take any photos – other than at coffee!!

Now – on to the matter of the engine. We had news back that the engine valves were working fine, after being cleaned and tested – on Tuesday morning two more engineers came back aboard and looked at what remains of the engine inside the engine bay on the boat ….. and found a hairline crack in the engine block itself. This basically means we aren’t going anywhere soon – and in fact it started a whole new project for us to get repair quotes and actually to consider a new engine.

We decided to head home whilst we awaited a quote for fixing the problem (which would involve a lot of work to make a sleeve in the cylinder to solve the problem of the crack) and also to get more quotes for a replacement engine – but not before I headed off for another walk to see my friend the noisy peacock.

We arrived home on Wednesday and were happy to see our cats once again, keeping us company as we started “project engine”

Skipper Nigel worked really hard and by the end of the week we found ourselves with lots of paper, various quotes and the decision that we would most likely be getting a new engine. We were only awaiting one quote from Rosa and the team who had taken the engine apart and diagnosed the fault. Luckily there was a fair amount of football on TV to keep us occupied whilst we were waiting for information. Finally Monday came and along with it Rosa’s quote – which ended up being fairly irrelevant since they couldn’t even start work until the end of July!!!! In the end all the quotes were along the same lines for new engines but very different timeframes. The most sensible option for us seemed to be a company based in Mazarron which is the next port along from Cartagena. We decided to take a trip there on Tuesday morning to meet the mechanics and discuss the quote in detail, and we were very happy with them. We spent an hour discussing the intricate details of what was needed and some of the logistics and found ourselves happy to agree to their quote. They are an official Yanmar dealer and assured us that the engine is already in a warehouse in Spain so it should arrive in a few days, and they have mechanics who can do the work when it arrives.

This was all very exciting for us, we headed back to Gemini J to relax and chat about it before we started the painful process of transferring the payment (there was so much bank security trying to pay a new payee a fairly large sum it was beyond a joke). After a lot of phone calls and internet security codes, mobile phone messages and secure passwords we finally paid – so as of this morning we have an engine on order !!!!!!

Needless to say we are very happy – the whole process and decision to replace rather than repair the engine has not been easy but we are glad that the decision is made and at least it all happened whilst we were in our home marina rather than somewhere we didn’t know. It also meant we could come home and we will change our plans as we see what happens when the engine arrives. In the meantime we will both get our second vaccines and we hope to be setting sail in July.

On Wednesday we were invited for a lovely coffee and cake at the fabulous cake shop in Cartagena by our friends on Katarina, it is nice that things are almost getting back to normal here, we still only meet in very small groups and we have to wear facemasks all the time (except when eating and drinking) but we’re hoping that rule will be relaxed this very weekend coming. Whilst all this has been happening boats have been leaving the marina – 3 boats on our pontoon alone have left and when we came back we were surrounded by open water – very strange. Our neighbouring boat skippers and crew have become friends over the past few months and we are eagerly following the progress of Hoopla and Dranack as they make their way towards the Balearics, missing their company in the marina.