The swing bridge was opening at first light, so we made sure we were ready to leave with the fisherman. The sea was quite choppy with still very little wind, so forget the sails again. Not long after leaving the harbour we were trailed by French custom officials who held up a sign for us to turn the VHF to channel 6. They asked a number of questions and then were on their merry way (or so we thought.) The passage was just a short hop of 25 nautical miles, so we were quite relaxed going into Dunkerque Marina. We were looking forward to just tying up but the engine had other ideas, it lost all power and we were drifting towards the visitors pontoon. Thankfully we were heading in the right direction with very little wind, luckily it helped being early in the season as the dock was deserted. Not long after the guys from Customs who had trailed us, came on board for more information (this took 2 hours as they required every bit of paper work about our travels for the last three years). We needed to prove we were residents of Australia and that the boat had been taken outside of the EU in the last Eighteen months. When cruising in Europe it helps to keep every receipt and travel document for personal & boat movement. We had fuel and marina receipts from Gibraltar, Morocco and Guernsey so after much debate they were finally happy.
Now for a mechanic! On the Marina there was a marine engineer who could check it out tomorrow. With his limited English and our limited French there was a lot of charades going on. After spending two hours checking fuel supply and filters it was found to be the fuel injector pump which needed major repairs. We were able to have it reconditioned by using Bosch rather than Yanmar parts. It still cost us over three thousand euros, but worth every penny.