Mission abort

It was a lovely quiet Sunday early morning. The birds were chirping. For our first journey solo, we chose to go back to Guernesey. Not only would we start in a somewhat familiar environment, it would also put us in a good position for the Channel crossing. We had a good weather window. We had double checked the times of tides and currents. Everything was good to go.

The day before, we had said our goodbyes to our new friends, some of which left on Saturday. Now it was our turn and it felt good. Catamaran owner and liveaboard, Serge, saw us off and took this video from our departure.

The travel started well in the lovely scenery of river Jaudy. But about an hour later, as we were motoring in the marked channel and making our way towards the sea, an alarm triggered in the engine compartment. A bad smell and fumes were coming from there because the motor was overheating. We needed to quickly find a place to stop and see what was happening. We identified a place outside the marked channel where we could drop the anchor and killed the engine. Yan went down to evaluate the situation. A pipe was detached in the freshwater cooling system and we had lost most of the motor coolant. Last week, Boreal installed an additional system to use the motor’s heat to warm up the boat, and something must not be quite right. Yan had to make the basic repairs to allow us to get back to Tréguier. We had left at high tide that morning and the water depth of 5 meters under the boat would soon vanish from our anchoring area to reveal the bare shores. Although the boat can be beached, we were not looking forward to doing it here and now. We needed to be able to start the motor again and get back to the channel and deeper waters.

Yan put the pipes back in place and once the motor had cooled off, added the all the spare coolant we had and completed with water from the tanks. The motor started and back we went where we came from. We found a secure place in the waiting pontoon until the tide was favorable again to manoeuvre back to our berth in Tréguier’s marina.

We will get it all sorted out during the week. Of course, we are disappointed but bear with us, our window of opportunity will come.