Coolant problem solved??

What a morning.

Pasha threw himself into our engine problem with quiet confidence. He took out the one section of copper pipe in the external coolant circuit which I have not yet examined closely (but had every intention of doing!). It is an inaccessible length of thick-walled copper tubing with no sign of corrosion or damage but the only segment outside the engine capable of undetected leak. Lo and behold, he found a tiny pinhole which may be the cause of all our problems.DSC_4087 If that is the case, the loss would be very difficult to detect because of the piping anatomy.

Anyway, splendid Pasha cleaned, acid-washed and soldered the suspicious section and covered it with a length of clamped coolant hose. All this was done to a wonderful recording of Rachmaninov’s Vespers, which the boys hummed along to. Maxine is off having a manicure. I sat in the cockpit, sipping coffee and enjoying the rare pleasure allowing someone competent to do the work.

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Across the river the golden domes of Archangel’sk cathedral glowed in the sun and the carillon pealed for Sunday service. With Rachmaninov at full volume and good coffee I felt very mellow, as Ian would say.

Now the system has been reassembled and we are ready for a beer. The final test will not come until we have motored for 8 hours. If the system still leaks, I will be no more disappointed than on each of the last 4 occasions when we suppposedly found and fixed the problem.

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