Thursday 27 February to Wednesday 12 March 2014

 

I went ashore by dinghy to clear in through St Lucia Customs and Immigration which is a relatively painless process here.  I bumped into Sue and John from Saltsgar III which is a boat we knew from Turkey several years ago.  Sue was one of the radio net controllers in Marmaris so her voice was familiar.  We compared notes on engine issues and they recommended a local engineer they have used for several years called Alwyn who is independent of the dealers.

 

I telephoned ‘Inboard Diesel’ in Martinique to let them know we are only ‘one island away’ and they confirmed that Martinique Carnival runs from 1st to 5th March and everything would be closed on the island.  Two of their engineers were coming to St Lucia on Thursday 6th to do another job but could come to us to listen to and hopefully diagnose our engine noise.  In the interim I called Alwyn and he was able to see us on Monday 3rd.  We came in from the anchorage to the marina so he he could look and his view was that the noise might be the ‘Idler Pulley’ (no I didn’t know either) in the timing belt mechanism but that he could also hear an internal grumbling noise from our diesel Injection Pump.  The idler pulley could be done relatively cheaply but the local dealer didn’t have the part in stock and Alwyn wasn’t available for some time in any case.  He warned me that if it was the Injection Pump that it would be expensive and questioned whether it would make sense spending so much on an old engine (12 years old and 2000 engine hours).  So now we had several diagnoses; Water Pump bearings, Alternator bearings, Idler Pulley or possibly the Injection Pump.

 

We had just about given up having a visit from Inboard Diesel on Thursday when Philibert turned up.  He was certain the problem was the Injection Pump having come across the problem before.  The advice is to replace the pump and the four injectors.  The trouble was that whilst Philibert’s diagnosis made sense for a lot of reasons (including the blue smoke we were now getting in the exhaust from unburnt diesel) he wanted to change so many other things at the same time that my cynical mind couldn’t help wondering if we might mask the real problem.  He gave an indicative cost and said he could prepare a proper quotation when he was back in Martinique on Monday 10th.

 

We explored our options including sending the Injection Pump away for repair in Miami.  This also proved expensive and I was finally put off once I heard other yachties tell me about repaired pumps which never performed properly.  The quote duly arrived on Monday and, including service work we asked for that was needed at 2000 hrs, the cost was more than half the price of a new engine.  I checked several sources in the UK and Europe and Inboard Diesel’s price for the Injection Pump was the best of the lot!

 

In the meantime we played Mexican Train on two Sundays with Nanook, Smart Move and Mai Tai, did laundry, refilled gas cylinders and other boat jobs and had dinner and lunch out a few times.  The best was a new sushi restaurant in the marina which was the only place devoid of fried food.

 

 

 

One of our lunches was at a Tapas place in Rodney Bay village.  We were joined by a mother and her two kittens:-

 

 

 

 

Then the other five turned up, she is under there somewhere.  We were not the only ones having lunch:-

 

 

 

 

The wind was too strong for enjoyable sailing so we stayed in St Lucia a few more days.  On Monday 10th we took a bus into Castries with Brenda and Dan from Nanook.  Castries was as scruffy as we remembered it but it was good to walk around the capital.  We had to fend off a lot of vendors selling tours, souvenirs and other goods but explaining we weren’t cruise ship passengers seemed to do the trick most of the time.

 

 

 

Brenda is wondering what Dan is buying this time:-

 

 

 

 

 

 

The shop on the left sells everything:-

 

 

 

 

 

Some of the buildings were attractive:-

 

 

 

 

 

A typical Caribbean Church:-

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the market there were some helpful signs:-

 

 

 

 

 

 

This one was a bit more specific:-

 

 

 

 

Would it be OK over there then?