Yesterday in the early afternoon I rented a bicycle for a few hours and peddled up to Fort Lorenzo, an old Spanish fort, protecting the entrance to the Chagres river, which was in the Spanish years an important river getting inland. Nowadays the river is dammed after 5 miles, for the Panama canal. It was a great ride in the woods (jungle) and a great fort to visit. However riding a bicycle in the tropics with 33 C and 84% humidity is different than riding in Holland I can confirm now. The 22 km I did certainly felt as the 65km I did on my first day in Holland 2 weeks ago. On the way back noticed several howler monkeys, they are everywhere in this part of the jungle.



Back on the boat to my big surprise the exhaust hose out of the US had arrived already! That was good news and I installed it right away. By end of the afternoon I was ready to fire up the almighty 65hp Volvo Penta. It started alright, however the oil pressure did not came up after a few seconds. I gave it some more seconds, as I had renewed the oil pressure sensor. After another few seconds still no oil pressure on the gauge so I shut it down. I looked around the engine and saw nothing. Then I looked in the bilge and found all of the 8 liters of lubricating oil there instead of in the engine. I had done an oil change and for the first time used an alternative oil filter, not a Volvo Penta oil filter. This is a common thing to do and should not give any problem. The advantage of using alternative (non OEM) filters is lower price and availability everywhere. Turns out the thread inside the filter is not 100% well done. So you are unable to screw on the filter for the 100%. It goes on, just not 100%, resulting it will not seal. So in my 15 seconds of running, it had pumped out all of the engine oil via the filter seal to the bilge. That is not good. It took me 10 minutes to figure out the culprit was in the oil filter threads. I found several others on board with the same problem. Luckily I also found some good ones (of the same alternative brand) with no thread problems, which installed as they should go. So I was able to install a good one and fill the engine with 8 new liters of oil. This is really a frustrating thing and it surprises me, obviously this is a bad batch with troubles in the thread. What about quality control nowadays? I need to get now a new set of filters for prior leaving Panama, as instead of the 10 oil filters I thought I have, I only have 2 useable one now.



So today I will start with cleaning out the 8 liters of oil from the bilge however I am not sure yet how to do that and clean up that mess. After that we try the engine for an hour at the slip and if all fine we go out to sea for a few days to try the new watermaker, get out of the marina and be back Sunday to pick up Heloisa and Auke.

Today is Heloisa's birthday! She is turning 28... Happy birthday mi amor! Hope to spend another great year with you on the boat, exploring some more out of the way anchorages in the Pacific.