Day 174, Year 1: Transmission Blues with a Little Good News
Date: Sunday, April 9, 2006
Weather: Another Beautiful Day in Paradise
Location: Academy Bay, Puerto Ayoro, Santa Cruz Island, Galapagos
Early this morning Heather and Jed left for a dive trip out to the island of Santa Fe. We stayed here waiting to hear from our agent and hopefully from a mechanic. About 9:30 the water taxi dropped off two mechanics and they immediately went to work in the engine room. Unfortunately they spoke no English and we speak no Spanish, but for the next three hours they worked and Mark tried to figure out what was happening. What we know for sure is that they were successful in removing the transmission from the engine and getting the coupling and the mounting plate removed. They took these parts and said, “Mañana.” They said something about welding the cracked mounting plate and ordering a new coupling from the continent. We assume that is South America-Ecuador, hopefully. We will hopefully get a translation of all of this from our agent in the morning, but the REALLY good news is that our engine runs just fine now that the transmission is removed. It purrs like a kitten and it doesn’t sound like there has been any damage to the engine. We also think the transmission looks good, but that is still to be determined. For now, we can once again use our engine to charge our batteries. That is very good news and we are hopeful that we might be able to get parts in and everything repaired in the next couple of weeks. Just yesterday we thought we might have to become permanent residents here, but today looks much more hopeful.
Heather and Jed had a great day diving and we are now headed into town for dinner. Life is good. It is continually full of little surprises, but we have truly learned to roll with the punches out here. And we have had to learn to trust. People we don’t know board our boat, work on our engine, and leave with the parts, and we ask no questions. All will be fine.
