39:30.90N 02:32.53E

Awoke bright and early, with me all excited about the prospect of a working generator and Sarah sorting out places to visit during the day. Enjoyed fresh croissants for breakfast while we waited for Palma to wake up and start buzzing. Lots of activity on the pontoon around us as staff busied themselves preparing their boats. It was fascinating late last night as one by one the boats around came to life with the owners suddenly appearing on their rear deck/patios to wine and dine and try to look cooler than anyone else! We took our washing in.

At 9.00am Sarah cycled off and this is her report: Firstly I went to visit the cathedral which had wonderful multi-coloured stained glass windows, and some rather typical Gaudi additions including an unimposing central crucifix (but possibly much more exciting lit by the special ‘floating’ lanterns?) and an extraordinary side chapel depicting the sea and the bounty of earth which  looked as though paint had been fairly randomly chucked around, surrounded by black stained glass!    Then to Palau March Museau d’Art with a Dali exhibition (rather along the lines of that on the Embankment!), 2 wonderful Josep Sert murals and outdoor sculpture .   Finally to the Es Baluard, a modern concrete building on the city fortifications with more modern sculpture, Miro (yuk – cannot work any enthusiasm for him), some lovely early 20^th century paintings of Mallorca etc and a beautiful Giacometti pencil portrait.   (Yes, I must get round to getting my drawing out!)   Then a couple of hours of energetic cycling to various chandleries (in search of such important kit:  fishing spinners and a oil pump); yet another abortive shopping attempt and provisioning.

At 9.45 am Charles Whitehead (the local Mastervolt agent) called to say he was on his way and would be with us in around 10 minutes. He finally arrived at 10.45am with various bits of equipment. The next 3 hours were spent trying to back-flush the missing impellor bits out of the cooling system and although the flushing was done thoroughly, no bits appeared, which might mean that all is well and they have already passed through the system or........they haven’t.

A quick test of the generator ended in seconds with the oil pressure failure warning as before, which was to be expected at this point. Charles now set about changing the oil pressure sender with the new one specially sent from Holland. He had great difficulty until he spotted that the thread on the old unit had been crossed, which meant that there was probably debris in the thread on the engine. This then required him to go off and get a tap (or is it a die, I never know which is which!) but as it was siesta, he was gone for quite a while, but he was confident that all would be well when he returned. I rather upset him with the suggestion that of course it was possible that the oil pressure sender was fine and that there really was a problem with the oil pressure. He has been dealing with Mastervolt generators almost since they began and cannot remember such a thing ever happening before so it was unlikely, but you could tell he was rattled!

In due course he returned with the tap/die and all seemed well until he found that he still could not fit the new sender. Further inspection revealed that they had indeed sent the wrong unit. As he prepared to hurl himself into the harbour, I mentioned that as we planning on a gentle cruise to Australia (at least), I had taken the precaution of buying a load of spares for the trip and a brief look in our paperwork showed that indeed we had the very part needed. So with considerable relief he fitted the new unit and we tested the generator under load and with the dry exhaust cut out of the system so we could measure the volume of water passing through the engine. This involved catching the water coming out of the exhaust in a bucket on a rope and timing how long it took to pump 10 litres. Rather more complicated than it sounds as the exhaust outlet is hidden by the curve of the hull. Anyway, all was deemed to fine and the job was declared finished. I did warn Charles that the final test would be once we were sailing the next day, as this seems to be the point at which previous repairs have failed.

We then decided that we would head for a bay to anchor in for the night, rather than pay another instalment of the National Debt. But when went to say goodbye to the nice man running the marina, he suddenly lost his command of English and largely in Spanish insisted that we had to pay anyway as it was from midday to midday and it was now 6.30 pm on the second day. He relented in the end and agreed that another time we would know better and so we left good friends and a bit less poor than we could have been.

Left the protection of Palma harbour and found that the swell out in the bay was huge, which was a big surprise given the light winds, however we pressed on to the anchorage at Playa Palma Nova (next door to Magaluf). Sarah had to call Ewan as she was sure he had been on holiday here recently with mates, which turned out to be the case once his memory had been jogged. (He remembered being in Magaluf, but was unsure if it had been Mallorca!!) May not be a peaceful night as we are fairly sure that the resort will burst into life later.

Plan to sail round to Cala Mondrago tomorrow, prior to crossing over to Menorca on Saturday.