Odysseus

Odysseus
Our Barge, Odysseus

Saturday, June 05, 2010

Saturday, May 29, The Diagnosis

At the crack of 8:30 am, before we had even finished our coffee, Alain showed up with a very welcome bag of pain chocolate and a couple of large toolboxes. Within two hours he had removed the cylinder head from the engine. While there was no obvious damage, there were a couple of places that looked questionable. We were again moored outside two big boats, making crossing difficult, especially with a large, heavy engine part. There was nothing Alain could do today, anyway, and he would be going to Dijon Monday afternoon, where a machine shop could pressure test the head and make sure it was flat. He would return Monday after lunch and deliver the head to Dijon. With nothing to do but sit and wait, we did just that.


Alain at work.



The offending part, we hope!



Our headless Mercedes.


Monday morning we were able to shift positions in the upper basin allowing us to be much closer to the bank with much easier access.
Monday afternoon a little before 2, Alain, true to his word, appeared, loaded the head into his truck and headed off to Dijon. By Tuesday afternoon we had word that the head was not cracked, was warped but fixable and once the parts arrived and the head was repaired, probably next Monday sometime, the engine could be reassembled. If the head was truly the problem, we could be underway by the middle of next week. All we could do was wait and make regular visits to the distributeur du billets (the cash machine) to make sure we had the euros required to make all this happen.

1 comment:

John Hardman said...

At least the Euro is $1.19 today (Saturday). That will make it better. Our regards to Alain, and good luck to you.

John