Yesterday was a bit of a nerve wracking day but with a rewarding ending. Having changed out the engine raw water pump, stripped down the cooler, renewed the exhaust elbow, taken the injectors home for cleaning and testing, and disturbed most of the cooling system before we went home last year, it was time to put it all back together again and see if it all still worked. Having come across many examples of ‘maintenance induced failures’ over a long career, this was not something to be taken lightly 😬. And failure would put an end to our cruising plans for this year - or at least severely delay them.  Having put it all together it was time to prime the fuel system and give it a go. You are never sure how long this is going to take, so the longer it takes the more you wonder if its ever going to happen or if there is something you’ve missed! Eventually, after many cranks of the engine, and the battery starting to complain, she fired into life and raced away, needing a rapid pull back on the throttle.

Success! After that it was splicing up the new main sheet, testing the electronics (all ok except for the AIS!) and fit the new  sounding ports for the fresh water tanks.

Today was slightly different. A generally successful day with a painful (for the wallet) ending. Changing the fresh water filters and reworking the hand fresh water pump pipe work to something a little more logical went well, as did re-riveting the gooseneck end of the boom. Then the Raymarine man arrived to look at the AIS…….

We had basically come to the conclusion that the GPS antenna for the AIS (which had been working ok last year) had decided to follow the lead of the VHF antenna and throw its hand in. This was something we could have changed ourselves, unfortunately not something we could get locally and really needed to make sure that really was the problem before we went and bought one. So our only recourse was to bring in the local electronics chap (who of course was a Raymarine agent - $$€€££). At least he was better than the one we had tried to use in Leros last year and actually knew what he was doing. Yes, the problem was the GPS antenna and I will fit a new Raymarine one for you - $$€€££, but at least it should be a good one! Eventually we agreed that we should run the cables in (as we have to take half the boat apart to do it) as long as he did the soldering. Thank goodness we managed to sell the old dinghy and two anchors which will pay for some of it!

On a more positive note, we met a British lady who was having to sell her boat and was looking for a good home for her … 

Well in those sort of situations, you just have to help out!