Sandy (our most excellent mechanic) picked us up from John Witchards (marine engineer extraordinaire) and took us to the shops for some supplies before taking us out to Venture and giving us the low down on the new engine.
The new engine looks and runs sweet inside a very clean engine bay which is no longer black from soot and even though it's a slightly bigger motor (50hp instead of 46hp), it seems more compact and John's work with marinising the base Kubota engine seems to make it fit better inside the engine space. There's much more room over the top and I can even reach down the front to the bilge below the engine!
The old, huge exhaust riser has been replaced with a much smaller unit (no more welding of the manifold flange) and there are less pipes to worry about as the heat exchanger is a part of the exhaust manifold instead of a separate unit.
Sandy (the engine wizard) told us all about the record breaking storms that came through Sydney a couple of weeks ago, a very nasty East Coast Low, and showed us some of the damage done in Pittwater. The boat just upwind of us looks a bit sad because it's furler failed and the sail ripped off it.
As far as I can tell at the moment, the only damage Venture took from the storm was we lost our house flag, the Garden Island burgee is in tatters, a flag halyard parted (which means a trip up the mast) and some minor wear on one of the headsail sheets.. Incredibly lucky.
If anyone finds a flag like this somewhere to the North West of Sydney, it's ours :-)
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