BP's oil leak has nothing on us.....

We had been noticing a bit of an oil leak from the engine since we left Dover. Mick our friendly (and ever optimistic) engineer assured us over the phone that everything would be fine.

In Gosport, we had changed the oil filter again thinking that the leak might have come from there. It still leaked.

The Galley Slave noticed that it was coming from something that was screwed into the engine block just above and behind the filter. We phoned Mick, our friendly (and ever optimistic) engineer who said "Oh just tighten it up a bit, it'll be fine". We tightened it up. It leaked a bit less.

On the trip over the channel, we checked and it was once again leaking quite badly. The Skipper tightened up the bolt again, it stemmed the leak for a while.

Next morning we decided we'd take the whole thing out (and identified it as the oil pressure sensor widget) and put some PTFE tape around the bolt and refix it to see if this fixed the problem. The Galley Slave elected to tighten it back up. "How tight should this go?", she asked. "Fairly tight", replied the Skipper. "It's getting tighter", she said, "Oh, it's gone all loose!" Damn thing had sheared off, leaving part of it stuck in the engine

So, now we had a hole in the top of the engine that needed fixing before we could go anywhere.

Off to the local engineer. Eventually he came and had a look and after much sucking of air through teeth, he told us that he would have to take the engine out, take it to his workshop, take the bit out and then refit the engine. Probably in the region of 700 Euros.

That evening, we were invited for drinks and food onto the boat next door, a German flagged Beneteau First 40.7. The skipper, called Geoff, was English, his delightful wife, Karin, was German.

After a lot of pork and even more wine, we mentioned our plight. "Oh, I could get that out in 10 minutes", said Geoff.

So what do you do? Qualified engineer, or drunken Englishman who has made Germany his home?

Next morning Geoff came round and had a look. Went back to his boat and sawed off the end of a file, shoved it in the hole and 10 minutes later the bit was out. We bought him a bottle of wine. Net saving 697 Euros!

Here's Geoff and his lovely wife:

And here are the bits (modelled by the beautiful Claire), this is the bit that was stuck in the engine:

And this was the bit that it was previously attached to:

All's well that ends well.