Unfortunately today after a two hour trip towards the North Sea (starting from Stellendam where we spent the last night) we discovered that our engine was broken again. It might have been due to the wavy conditions the days before and on that particular day.
What had happened was that the repair it had received in Flevo Marina for a horrendous amount of money from a rather unmotivated team of technicians had broken again.
Actually it was not a real surprise and although the “specialists” there had told us having it repaired their way would last for a long time and would be very stable it was still fixed in a rather “unintelligent” way.
Unfortunately the way they fixed it broke even more things and only because we had discovered it in time and because we were really lucky all could be repaired in the end. Half an hour more of running the engine would have caused more serious damages.
Anyway, to keep the story short, we decided to visit a little engine repair shop in Middelharnis that J. had found in a dutch marina guide.
That choice turned out to be a very lucky one. The owner of that company made a good impression on us and so we decided to stay for the next day to get things repaired properly.
The next day turned out to be a very busy day full of work for us. Cor Meester (the owner of the repair shop http://meestermotoren.nl) offered us to prepare and do as much as we could do ourselves to reduce the costs of the repair to a minimum and to let him do his customer work first.
So after a whole day of work we had a brand new alternator, a shiny peace of rock solid steel to fix it and all broken screws replaced.
Our engine runs smoothly again and if anything is ever going to break on the engine again it will certainly not be the parts we repaired.
Thank you Mr. Meester for your support!
Since Cor offered us a secondhand Suzuki 4hp outborder for a good price (we still had been looking for one for our dinghy for a while) we dedicated almost another day in taking the little engine apart, getting fuel at the petrol station and servicing the unit to make it run smoothly again (it had not been used for a year or two).
It still needs some adjustment and we might dismantle and clean again the carborator but it runs and will be a most useful piece of gear when mooring in tidal areas with stronger streams.
