Torrevieja, Spain

Torrevieja is by no means a place we would have stopped if not for the leak. During the week we had spent there we were constantly baffled by the large number of British, Dutch and German tourists, as well as the many Spanish tourists that flooded the promenade and quayside.

Sure, the Salinas are beautiful and there’s the Submarine “Museum” which, as exciting as it may be, is even smaller than the Lee-on-Solent Hovercraft Museum, but the rest of the city is nothing to write a blog post about.

We ended up in Torrevieja because of an annoying drip around our prop shaft seal that had suddenly become a significant leak.

On our 2nd morning on anchor since leaving Cartagena, we got up and readied ourselves and the boat for the next leg to Valencia. During the routine engine check we (Cameron) decided to try and put an end to the old, slow leak and put some grease around where the water was coming from. Immediately we started taking in an amount of water worth worrying about (two cups of water every 20 minutes).

We weren’t particularly worried about sinking -  the water-activated sump pump was doing it’s job efficiently - but more annoyed by the periodic drone of the pump. We decided we didn’t want to press on to Valencia as that would mean the leak continuing into the night, and one of us (Cameron) would have to get up at 20 minute intervals to turn the pump off manually.

The next 3 hours were spent ringing up every boatyard within a 30 NM radius , including Cartagena which we just left, to find a place that would take us in asap. Eventually salvation came from Oscar, a Dutch mechanic who owns a boat yard in Marina Salinas in Torrevieja.

We arrived at Salinas at around 17:00 that day and despite the hour, got to work immediately.

Diagnosing the problem was simple - the shaft seal was leaking. Normally, the shaft seal has to be changed every 500 motor hours or every 5 years, ours hasn’t been changed since 2017 and we hoped we could get away with changing it at the end of the season rather than when we first bought the boat…

Yet, as with all boat repair jobs, the complexity is not in the repair itself, but all the work you need to do to even make the repair possible: we quickly realised we couldn't take the shaft off to replace the seal because the flexible coupling located between the shaft and the gearbox had welded itself together with rust into what was has become essentially a single piece of metal.

So started the week long saga of attempting to remove the coupling with the help of Oscar’s endlessly patient crew.

We began with light encouragement - tapping, banging, pulling, using a comical series of progressively larger and larger wrenches. Yet after a couple days it was obvious that a heavier hand was needed and whilst we watched with dread, the acetylene torch was finally wheeled over to the boat. The bilge was covered up with wet rags and the torch flame aimed at the coupling and a few blasts with the torch followed by flash cooling finally loosened the stubborn nut.

Finally, after a week of persuasion, the boat was ready for the 20 minute job of changing out the shaft seal. They dragged us over to the travel lift and slowly craned us out. Then, while everyone was at lunch, they switched out the seal and had us back in the water in an hour.

After much thanking and promises to return, we settled our stunning cheap bill (considering how much they did for us) and organised the boat for a few days of hard sailing to make up for the lost time.

We were now a week behind schedule with a date to keep in Barcelona.