What a difference a day makes - Part deux

Where do I start? Today the forecast was saying variable 3-4 mainly northery. So with that in mind, and our luck so far, I made the decision that it would translate as, at least a 4 on the nose, wind against tide going up the Sound of Luing. Not today thank you, we'll wait a day for the Azores High to arrive on Tuesday. So we did the washing up, had coffee, filled the water tanks of Pixie and topped up our spare fuel cans. There was still no sign of any wind, in fact the loch was like a mirror. There were also another couple of 30 odd footers going, so we made the decision to go for it as well. The sun was shining, there was no wind, the forecast was for variable after all. So we got Pixie ready, Kirsty reversed her out of the berth. Increased speed astern to get steerage from the berth, put her in neutral before putting her ahead to spin her around, then the engine cut out. We were now going backwards towards a line of boats with no way of stopping. I went below and re started the engine with just enough time to avoid a crunch.

Thinking it was a one off we motored out into the loch, only for the engine to start labouring again. My heart sank. I increased the revs, but there was no change in the engine note, then it slowed and stopped. Again we re started it, but the engine was not happy, so we returned back to Ardfern Marina.

Kirsty went to seek help from the yard and spoke to the manager, Bob. Although they were very busy Bob said he would send someone down when he could. In the mean time I replaced the drinking water filter and also cleaned the sea water strainer for the engine. It was while I was doing this I noticed our one of the tubes for our stern gland oil reservoir was weeping oil. The reservoir holds the oil that it used in the seal where the propeller shaft goes from the inside of the boat to the outside. The oil seal stop the sea water coming into the boat. The seal has always had a thirst for oil, but I could never work out why, until today when I could see the inspection pipe was cracked and was leaking oil. I replaced the pipe, so hopefully it will use less oil now.

Around 4 ish Steven came down and had a look at the engine, he re-bled it, and in the process noticed our fuel filter assembly wasn't fitting together exactly as it should, so he replaced the fitting, applied some gunk to all the screw threads, and so far it seems to have worked, we took Pixie out for a quick spin around the end of the Loch and everything seems (fingers crossed) to be working as it should.

Tonight Kirsty cooked some very tasty lamb sausages that we bought in Tayvallich. One of the downsides of cruising, is you never find out how good food is until you cook it, usually a day or two later when it's too late to buy some more. Luck was on our side as it seems the great local store here in Ardfern, seem to have the same supplier of meat. We'll be going there for som sausages, tomorrow before we set off.