So I said the Ionian was somewhere over there? Hmm and there it will stay for a few days. Yesterday getting ready to come into Marina di Leuca I was leaping around with lines and noticed smoke (steam) coming out from the starboard exhaust. Quick run to other side and no, nothing there plus more water coming out. Alerted the Boss who has spent past couple of hours trapped in the engine. It’s most likely the impeller (yes we have a spare and a spare for the spare..) but wow, whoever designs boats doesn’t think much about how to get into the tiny spaces and have hand movement. Also, in the absence of Ned, I’ve been the one looking at diagrams! (Ned Kelly, good friend as I don’t have to look at diagrams…author of Http://www.amazon.co.uk/Until-Sings-Mike-Balmayne-Trilogy-ebook/dp/B00B7JXSZM ) Boss will add his technical bit later I’m sure..<Bob the Builder can we fix it, nah it’s buggered>
The freezer then decided to defrost so today has been spent cooking to avoid throwing things away. So far there’s meatloaf, baked stuffed chicken breasts – a twist on chicken Kiev, creamy spinach and spiced pork mince to turn into lettuce wraps. Industrious indeed but not by choice.. Oven was on so in went an almond loaf, this time substituting 50g of almond flour for coconut flour and it smells delicious! Chicken recipe going up later.
Just a word on the marina here, considering we must be high season now? They’re obviously not charging catamaran rates. It’s €65 per night including electric and water, that’s pretty good! Little town is pretty, all the local amenities you could need and good runs for tommy.
We were intending to just be here for the night so I could do a supermarket run before crossing to Corfu, boat jobs have decided otherwise. We will leave as soon as everything’s fixed. That does mean I have time on my hands so if you have any recipe suggestions or workouts you’d like to do just drop me an email: samantha@flyingpancakes.org and I’ll get on it. Thanks 🙂
4 Replies to "Smoke, impellers, fridge in a sulk..what next? Engine out tomorrow.."
admin June 21, 2015 (6:59 pm)
I would personally like to have a quite word with the insane engineer that designed this engine. You would think that the raw water impeller was a fairly crucial piece of equipment that you might need access to in an emergency at sea. RANT!!!! to get to this one you have to take off all the water pipes, remove the starter motor and disconnect the wiring loom just to get to the faceplate! So…… having done that, discovered only three bolts are fixing it (not four as one has sheared off and not been sorted when Elle’ar was in charter, I shear another two by just looking at them.
No problem, just remove the water pump and drill the sheared bolts out I thought. Ahhhhhh. Well the idiot that designed has put the engine mount hard up against the bolts holding the pump on! So…….. disconnect the shaft, unbolt the engine, lift it up to get to the mount, remove the mount and then, with luck, I can take the pump off!
Insane!
Oh, and Samantha made me take a shower as I was covered in oil and grease and I then discover the shower drain pump is blocked!
Ned June 22, 2015 (2:52 pm)
I hear that the Italians got the pump out Was there anything wrong with the impeller? Don’t forget to find the missing lobe!
admin June 22, 2015 (3:16 pm)
Well…..
I went into the office and inquired about an engineer to get out the sheared bolts. About twenty minutes later two guys turned up on the boat and I tried to explain that I would take out the pump (since that would take me all day as I had to take out the engine) and would then give them the pump to drill out the sheared bolts. Since their English vocabulary was actually less than my Italian one (I did not know that was even possible!) they took it to mean they where going to remove and fix it. To my embarrassment and amazement they walked away with the pump in their hands in about ten minutes so I am not actually complaining. Now waiting for it to come back, hopefully this month!
Mark June 23, 2015 (5:52 am)
Sorry to hear about the problems.
I don’t know what it is about water pumps that they seem to have the life expectancy of a moth.
There are times when I think boat designers cannot sleep at night for laughing to themselves thinking of all those people cursing, cussing and scraping knuckles bare to get to parts that need to be changed.
Hopefully it will be sorted soon and we will see you across here in Greece.
Wi-fi extender is working great and have not used a sim card yet.