So, here's the rest of the story of the engine replacement. As I told you, we had a new dripless shaft seal installed on the boat while she was stored in Lagos, Portugal. We actually only wanted our old one re-stuffed
but I guess with the language barrier and the fact that our old one was older technology
(but it still worked – oh well) we ended up with a new one. This new seal needed to be vented but was vented incorrectly and no one caught it. This mistake, allowed
salt water to get into our engine. For about
a month, we'd wondered why we were having so much trouble getting the engine
started (we replaced the battery, replaced the starter and numerous other
ideas). Well, we found it and "it" had caused the engine to completely lock up. The engine had to be replaced. What, we were originally told would be
a 4-day job as there was an engine available in Spain, turned into a
7-week job. During one happy hour, we were complaining to our marina friends John and Jackie that the boatyard kept telling us
mañana (which google translate assured me means tomorrow) and then nothing would happen. John, immediately explained that
“
mañana doesn’t mean tomorrow, it just means
not today”!!!
When we returned from our road trip, we were told that the new engine was available and we were being put on the schedule. The local carpenter was unavailable so Pedro went to work completely dismantling our galley as our engine sits mid ship right under our kitchen countertop.
The next day with the help of the
marina staff and their dinghy, we were towed over to the lift at the boatyard. She was secured and we were ready to go.
Well, no one bothered to mention that Thursday
was a holiday, no one wanted to start anything on Friday and Monday was another
holiday! (Did mention that the yard is also closed so we couldn't even get to the boat to get anything?) It's OK, take deep breaths! They finally arrived with the new
engine on the following Tuesday! No problem. Out with the old and in with the new. However, when they
put the new one in, they realized some adjustments were needed to make it fit
properly (the exact engine we had was 20 years old and not produced anymore). No problem, Mañana!
Well, that took another week.
In the interim, Pedro kept saying that the new engine was too big but we were assured that it would
fit once all adjustments had been made.
Well, after they came back the
following week, they realized that yes, it was too big.
No problem, they found the next smaller size engine
in Barcelona and would ship it out mañana!
Well, that took another week.
Once again, we were kicked out of our La Linea
apartment (they had already booked it for the weekend) and there was nothing else
available in town so we headed back over to Gibraltar again. While we were initially frustrated, this ended up being a blast as we decided to
again climb the rock. While we went back
to the Ape’s Den again to see the monkeys and also to St. Michael’s Cave, this time we headed over to the south side and see a few of the sites we
missed the first time. We had a great
weekend only to come back to La Linea to find that the bikes we’d left there were each
missing a tire. Just when we were losing
our faith, the owner of the Airbnb we’d rented drove to the marina to pick us
up and offered to help with the bike repair in the morning. As usual, we again had to remind ourselves
that all in all, we were still extremely fortunate and everything was working
out.
Finally, the new engine arrived after yet another week. And it fit, sort of! A slight adjustment was necessary to lengthen the engine mounts. No problem, they’ll be back mañana!
Well, you guessed it, it was a four more days.
They were almost finished but
still need to re-install our prop (the pitch needed adjusting for the
new engine) and finish hooking everything up.
See you mañana!!
Well, that was 2 more days (I think we were
at least getting better).
After being out of the water for 24
days and moving residences 6 times (because apparently everyone was visiting La Linea and/or
Gibraltar during this time and accommodations everywhere were scarce), we were back in the water.
Several people have inquired about the cost of this repair.
When we added everything up for the insurance company
of the former boatyard the total amount (converted to US $'s) came to $34,725.65 (not
counting Pedro’s work or our expenditures on the delicious Gibraltar gin that we discovered while we were there the second
time).
We stayed a few more days to put our galley back together, test out the new engine and re-provision the boat (it seemed like more beer and wine than anything but who’s counting). We had a wonderful farewell dinner with dear friends Trish and Jim whom we’d met in Lagos. The next day, we fueled up in Gibraltar and sailed out and around marveling at all of the places that we now knew very well. See, I told you last time that the Charles V Wall had a million steps!!!
As I type this, we’ve been sailing
in the Mediterranean mostly following the southern Spanish coast for a week and a half. We’ve had mostly good sailing (some great and
some not so). We had some great anchorages outside party beaches and some very quiet spots. We went ashore a couple of times but mostly just wanted to sail. We saw dolphins, huge jelly fish (the picture is terrible but it was really cool) and our first whale spotting! We anticipate making Cartagena tonight. We’ve been told by our friend Malcolm that it’s
a wonderful city and that we’re ng to want to stay there for the winter. We’ll see. We’d hoped to get a little farther but don’t want to rush. Either way, we’ll fill you in on that next time.
Until next post!
