Guatemala - continued

Salamander
Thu 28 Feb 2019 14:00
We do sometimes wonder if we will ever be able to leave. Having had the engine repairs carried out, the gearbox was rebuilt – getting an engineer was accomplished by the owner Richard calling in a favour. We had started to despair as the mechanic broke a new bearing he had decided to replace and was obviously out of his depth, until Richard stepped in again to get him some help we could not (really) see any way of leaving as the engine, gearbox and other faults meant we wouldn't be able to ge out of the river, sailing is not possible.

Anyway, we found 2 loose bolts just sitting in the engine room, so we had the engineer back in. He argued with us before accepting the bolts had to be refitted as they were definitely left over from their work and that he should check the rest of the bolts they had fitted. We finally splashed on the Saturday to find that starting the engine spread oil everywhere. The engineer hadn't replaced 3 bolts, the third being an oil pipe to the rocker cover!
So we had to spend a night on the fuel dock and wait for them to come out and finish the job they had started. Unfortunately the fuel dock has massive neon lights and it was swarm night. We had to leave the boat as 1000s of insects swarmed all over it. After mating, they die, so we had a carpet of of insects on the deck and hosed off vast quantities, but were to spend days sweeping up and finding insects here and there.

guatemala
We were on the Puma fuel dock

On the Sunday the engineer returned, cleaned up the engine room and replaced the bolt. We literally anchored within sight of the marina. We spent 2 nights anchored then motored 0.3 of a mile to Hacienda Tijax ecolodge.
Yet another bolt appeared in the engine room bilge and there was still oil on the drive belt and when Murray joked 'see you tomorrow' he said 'No' quite adamantly.



Since moving to the ecolodge we have had 2 species of hummingbird in the cockpit, while first thing in the morning Caroline jumped as a 3ft tall great egret landed on the bow.
We have also managed a long lunch and swim in the pool, back to the hard cruising life-style after a very long 2018 and lots of work on the boat.