Yes really, but mainly boat jobs rather than exciting sailing adventures. I have about 147 tasks on the list, and despite working solidly (well, relatively speaking) for a week the number has not shrunk. Boat owners the world over understand this problem, the list never gets shorter… so I’ll post a few updates to catch up.

Mario the Yanmar man arrived on the day and at the time he promised (this already makes him better than most UK marine professionals).

We'd had a problem with the port engine; when going for maximum revs it decided that was just too tiring and refused. In yachting circles this is technically known as a BFP (Big xx Problem), because you never know when it will pack up entirely, and the chances are it will be when you need it most.

But Super Mario immediately diagnosed the problem - not enough fuel getting to the engine, and the likely cause was the fuel filters being blocked. I started to like this chap, because I now have enough knowledge to understand  that this is at the cheapest end of boating expensiveness (there is no such thing as cheap when it comes to boats). So the primary filter was removed, and pronounced to be too dirty. Certainly the new one was white inside whereas the old was black, but then you’d be black if you’d been filtering diesel for 250 hours.

But the real culprit was still to come. Removing the smaller secondary filter revealed a thick slime – bacteria in Spanish is the same as English, isn’t that convenient. Despite having added highly expensive stuff that’s guaranteed to kill “diesel bug” the pesky blighters took that as a challenge to breed. The chances are that it happened in the cold and damp of the winter and spring in the UK. Apparently it’s not much of a problem here (they have other issues, which mainly involve the fact that water shouldn’t be in your fuel tank)

So I’m going to change the filters and service both engines. I reckon I have enough knowledge to be dangerous.