Zen and the art of boat maintainance.

More delays to our departure as our solar panels arrived almost a week before the cable and controller. Dreams of loads of free solar power had to be shelved for a while. The upside was rather than my usual method of diving in with both feet it allowed me time to further think the overall plan. Paring away all superfluous frippery's left me with an extremely simple and I felt efficient plan.
Meanwhile we settled in to enjoy Las Arenas. This is a photo of the marvellous transporter bridge which for some reason is now sporting a large X and flags on the gondola cables.

The plan required some holes to be drilled in the boat, never my favourite thing to do!
However I had figured that the shortest cable run would be best. The two 100 watt panels being mounted initially on the bimini meant coming into the aft cabin ( our bedroom )

We tend to run the engine every few weeks to circulate the oil and generally keep things on the move and not settled in the same place for too long. On one of our regular engine runs up to temperature the raw water pump had developed a leak, not the end of the world but something we could not ignore. Our engine is one of those modern mysteries, by which I mean its designed and built in Britain by a firm which is still in business, Namely Lister -Petter. Its noisy and crude but it starts first time every time and even a total mechanical incompetent such as myself can with a study of the manual actually understand how it works and more importantly have at least a hope of fixing it.

In this case the fix required a study of the sea water cooling pump, the actual pump is cleverly designed to have two seals (oil and water) the oil being on the engine side and separated from the raw water (seawater) side by a gallery with holes which effectively prevent back pressure from a leaky seal from getting for example water in the engine. Unfortunately this means that once a seal fails then sea water leaks directly onto the hot engine. This has two direct consequences,firstly its immediately apparent there is a problem, secondly dilute battery acid (sea water) spills onto hot metal and begins to strip off the paint etc. Looks pretty ugly as can be seen from the photo.

The local mechanic here is Roberto, lovely man and very busy but has no English at all. we struggled through with my poor Spanish and mime and he agreed to see if he could source a replacement pump and a service kit to repair the original pump.

See "rules of the boat" by Chris Hall namely...........If anything needs replacing get a new one and a spare.

I later found Roberto had been in touch with Barcelona and the Spanish distributors had none in stock. I dug around in the spares box and discovered that Chris had left me two seals so I asked Roberto to go ahead and refurbish the pump and replace both seals and I would see if I could find a replacement pump in England. A hunt on the internet found two, one at £365 and another at £100. guess which  went with!

Also ordered some other bits and bobs, hose connectors and a spare impeller, See above rule.

A.S.A.P .Supplies might well figure large in the future.If they are as good as their word and the pump arrives before the end of the week they may well become my suppliers of choice.

As we have been delayed awhile I find myself thinking more and more about Galicia and Santiago de la Compostella. The Pilgrims way is all around us here, we are are actually the Via Norte or Northern way. The above photo is one of the many signs of the way of St James. This one is in the pavement in Portugalete. they are easy to miss but once you spot them they are everywhere.

The innocuous little arrows above also signify the Way. We must visit the shrine at Santiago de la Compostella. Technically we cant actually sail there, as I understand it the journey must start from your home and then 200 miles must be on one of the acknowledged ways or routes in order to be recognised as a pilgrim. We dont have time to do that, but we can sail close and get the bus......

For which we need to fix the engine.............

We were walking along the front this morning on our way to the bakery for some fresh bread. An elderly woman stopped us and was speaking to us in rapid Spanish. Lynne apologised and told her we were English and our Spanish wasn't very good. In almost perfect English she then explained that she had stopped us to say how pretty Lynne was and what a lovely colour she had. Lynne was wearing one of her favourite frocks that she had bought in Newry and I must admit the lady was absolutely correct.