Sunday 2 January 2011              35:45.19N         5:20.54W

Spent the day trying to fix the engine but it had water in all four cylinders, and burned out the starter motor. The port staff recommended Jorge Molina, a diesel engineer from Ceuta, who came on Monday and pronounced  the heat exchanger dead and that spares would take time to receive from Yanmar in Barcelona. In fact the heat exchanger wasn’t in stock in Barcelona so things were going to take a while.

Tuesday was spent lazing about while the engine was further investigated, and at 04.00 on Wednesday Yassim took us to Ceuta to catch the ferry to Algeciras. He did a brilliant job jumping the queue at the border, and we caught our plane in Gibraltar. Milano Blanco stayed languishing at Smir awaiting repairs….

What this incident also spoiled was a serious sounding asado (BBQ) planned at Rhona & Charlies’ house in Estepona. We were dismayed to hear that they had bought a lechon (suckling pig) in our honour, and of course we couldn’t get there before our flight.