Blown it big time

It's not good news. In fact as Willem said "This is really shit for you". The cylinder head itself is also damaged and a 1 day job has just got a lot more complicated. We have two options: take the damaged cylinder head to Inverness to be skimmed (earliest that could be done is Monday) and re-installed, or buy a second hand cylinder head from Rick who runs the glass bottom boat and happens to have a few spare engines kicking around. That will take a lot more time and will cost more, but there is no guarantee that the old one can actually be skimmed if the damage is too deep. At £1000, a new one is simply not an option and would be a waste on an old engine like ours. Rick is going to bring his spares down tomorrow and we'll go from there.

The sun has been shining all day today which has made somewhat of a difference to our morale, but we just can't forget the fact that we have now been here for over a week, and we're dying to get on our way. We have come to the conclusion that it might make sense to leave Pixie in Scotland at the end of our 3 months rather than race to get home and miss out all the places we really wanted to see.