Alta

And so we found ourselves in the marina in Alta with what we were pretty sure was a fried starter motor, and upon some further tests and closer inspection was exactly that. Scary how burnt out it was and how close we were to a full fire in the yacht! On the bright side, the weather was nice and Rune, who had helped catch us when we sailed in proved to be super friendly and helpful. He had sailed his yacht around the world and been living on yachts for the last 25 odd years, so he was keen to chat to some other sailors.

The next day Russell’s Mum was joining for 10 days. Now she always knew that the yacht would be a bit unpredictable, but we don’t think she was expecting to be stuck in a marina for a week! Luckily there was plenty to do and see, and we had a dinner party with Rune almost every night which was great fun. A new starter motor took a few days to arrive and while we were waiting, the weather turned pretty sour, so we were going to have to spend more time at the marina even if we got the engine running. There were a couple of stressful nights with high winds and big swell causing a lot of surging in the marina, especially as we were on the fuel dock right next to the marina opening. So 3 fenders turned into 7 fenders and quite an elaborate spring system for the mooring lines! During one gust of wind, there was some concern it would blow the yacht right over on her side! Glad we weren’t out in a shoddy anchorage with no engine…
Even with the storm and dinner parties, we still managed to fit in fixing our toilet, replacing and tweaking much of the hardware for the Genoa, and Rune fixed our spray dodger, Genoa tack and made us a new cockpit cover for our rainy days to come!

It wasn’t all boat work and dinner parties though. Rune took us around to see some of the rock art in Alta that has been dated back to the Stone Age - that was pretty impressive! We also managed to find out that Norway does have some great food, you’ve just got to go to the right places.

Finally, the weather let up and we had all the bits we needed to keep sailing. So over a last dinner we said goodbye to Rune who had been amazing with his help and good company, and after a not so early night got up before 6 to set off. When Russell pushed the button to start, the engine barely started to turn over and stopped. Huh, our funky starter battery must have finally given up, so we switched to our good house battery and tried again, same thing. Oh boy…Ok, let’s try both batteries - it was a cold morning. Same again. Now Russell panicked…there’s only a few reasons why an engine will refuse to turn over, and none of them are good. Trying to turn the engine using a wrench proved it was in fact jammed somehow. Water in the cylinders was the only possible explanation, but how? Well, remember the storm and the surging from the waves? Turns out it was enough to force seawater up our exhaust pipe and completely flood the engine.

So, another long day. This time pulling the engine apart to get an opening to the cylinders, draining the engine oil that was also now full of seawater, and in the process finding that the diesel filter was also full of water. That was an entirely independent way we almost destroyed our engine, so we were glad to have found the water before the filters failed. Turns out there was a lot of water in the whole diesel system. We still don’t know why unfortunately…

By the evening, we had flushed all the water out of the engine, oil and diesel system. One hell of a day considering we were up so early and thought we would be sailing off!

Hopefully tomorrow we can go sailing…Read more