Wednesday, 25.05.2011, 13:30 local (17:30 UTC), 18:25.2N, 067:09.5W (Aguadilla, Puerto Rico)

 

Sailing is so much fun! As we rounded the north-western corner to approach Aguadilla the combination of trades, late afternoon landwind and channel effect produced a nice local wind of 12kn. After nine hours of motoring I gladly killed the engine and unfurled the genoa to sail the last 5nm on a beam reach with 6kn of speed. Wonderful!

 

Not quite as wonderful was the discovery this morning that the engine is missing almost all the oil, and that there's water in the engine bilge. Lots. I topped off the oil and then started on the engine to see where the water was coming from. Holy moly! There was a whole waterfall of seawater leaking from the vicinity of the heat exchanger. I watched in horror, when suddenly the low-oil-pressure alarm went off and I shut down the engine immediately. Disaster. How come none of the alarms went off yesterday?

 

I called my brother for advice and comfort then started to work on the primary cooling circuit. So far with little success. And then there is of course the oil pressure, which is a serious problem. It's not being burned in the engine, that would show in the exhaust smoke. I read some in my "Marine Diesel Engines" book, but I don't really know where to start. I guess I should take the cooling circuit and engine apart, exchange all the gaskets, and check the heat exchanger as well as the engine bearings. That will keep me busy for days, and then there is the question of getting spare parts. And the fact that I'm anything but an engine expert. Time for outside help I guess, I only hope that I can find some here, it's not really a big town.

 

Sailing is so much fun.