No word from Bill last night so all is good.

Once again it has been a week of highs and lows on Osprey. We have had increasing frustration with our engine install which has led to serious questioning of our sanity. I think it has been over 10 weeks since the new engine was lowered into Osprey and we are still not up and running. However, we have a glimmer of hope! After the frustration of our failed attempt at cold starting last Thursday - we did some searching on the web. Lo and behold there were some sporadic reports of similar starting problems with our model Yanmar. I was getting seriously worried as these reports were dated from the end of last year to the spring of this year and the general gist was... this is a problem and no one can find a fix. "Oh Great" we think, we have spent thousands of dollars on a dud! Tom started by calling Yanmar and got referred to Mack-Boring who supplied our engine to the dealer we bought it from. He was getting voice-mails rather than live help so he left a message. I decided to e-mail the various people who had posted on web-based cruising forums about their troublesome Yanmars. Amazingly enough I got almost instant replies from a Dutch sailor and someone on the California coast. Both told me that Yanmar had come up with a solution and had issued a Service Bulletin detailing how to fix the problem and their engines were now fine. At about the same time Tom finally spoke to the tech. guy at Mack-Boring who said "Oh yes! This is a well known problem with this model engine - I will e-mail the Global Technical Bulletin and the repair work will all be covered by Warranty". We have now given GTB2009010 to Scott, our mechanic, who has been in contact with Oldport Marine in Newport (who got the engine from Mack-Boring) - how convoluted can this be? Oldport Marine had not come across this problem themselves and this whole issue leaves me wondering who on earth gets the Global Technical Bulletins? It would appear not the end user!! Thank goodness we were proactive and did some research and Hooray for the World Wide Web. So the upshot of all this is that some new parts are winging their way towards us and the fix should get done early this week. Once again - please cross all fingers and toes!