Martin, our diesel mecanic, showed up yesterday at 8:30 as promised. He had been referred to us by a neighbour at Cabrillo Isle Marina, who spoke very highly of him as well as the fact he was a certified Yanmar mecanic.

We had been trying for two years now to find the source of an antifreeze leak that would occur everytime we would motor for a while. Before leaving Vancouver at the end of August, our diesel mecanic recommended we change our fresh water pump, which we did, but still the leak persisted.

After running the engine at 1500 RPM for 20 minutes, Martin found the leaky cock on the heat exchanger of the fresh water cooling system.

Given the 1500 hours we currently have on our engine, the remoteness of many of the places we will be visiting in the future and Martin's obvious competence, we decided to do an engine overall. First he flushed our system several times until the water came out clean, because we had the wrong antifreeze in and it had the potential to have caused damage to the engine.

He removed the two heat exchangers, the turbo components, mixing elbow and the four injectors, all to be tested, cleaned and repainted where needed. All valves will be adjusted on his next visit and he will show me how to do it in the future.

Before leaving, he cleaned the entire engine room, the motor, primed the few rust spots he found and spay painted. The motor looks brand new.

Monday I will get a bunch of gaskets, O rings, a few hoses, coolant, cap etc.

We were very pleased with the quality of the work Martin did and how hard he worked. He never waisted a minute and never took a break.

We had him for lunch, a fact he much appreciated and Lynne gave him a spare set of cutlery she had along with a recipy book for his wife.

A by product of this big project is the fact we had to completely empty the aft stateroom of all the stuff we carry, to give Martin full access to the engine room. The salon and cockpit are a complete mess.

It will be a week or so before the engine is put back together and that we can get the next specialist to investigate and fix our intermitent overcharging problem.