Key West - Fuel leak saga continues

I needed a different kind of distraction - so I admired this house nearby

We prepared, hopefully, for a Thursday departure by doing a laundry, too optimistic. The tightening of all the connections was not successful yesterday so today on Wednesday the mechanic tried replacing all the crush washers and reassembling the injection pump. However, it was to no avail, it still leaked after reassembly. A fuel leak in the engine compartment is not something you want to let go. Now, we are dealing with diesel and not gasoline so it's much less combustible but it's still will burn quite well once ignited.

An all too familiar sight!

So with the news that the leak was still present I was on the phone to my Volvo supplier in Connecticut I've dealt with for the past 10 years, ready to order a replacement for the entire injector pump assembly. I had to place the order by 4:00 pm to guarantee delivery by 10:30 am the next day. Meanwhile, the mechanic is on the phone to his boss and he hands the phone to me. It seems that the dealer here will not install any parts bought from anyone other than him!! So on one ear I have my supplier in Connecticut and on the other ear the guy down here refusing to install a part bought somewhere else and I have a deadline to leave on Friday - giving me one day to get the repair done before the weather closes in for a week or more (strong winds out of the east - the direction I'm headed). So I dropped the phone to McDonnell Marine (sorry about that) to listen to the local Volvo deal make his ultimatum. Well, he has me over a barrell. If I don't leave Friday, the weather report says Ill have strong east winds for the next week, that would cost me about $700 additional in dockage fees. So I cave and agree to buy the part from him at full retail on the promise it'll be here and installed on Thursday and I'll still get the $650 return fee for the old part. I was promised a call back to be sure everything was in order but never got the call. I hope that doesn't mean he couldn't arrange to get the part by Thursday?!

So you can see it was not one of our better days in Key West. The weather is still wonderful but the distractions are rampant. We'll see how things turn out Thursday (will Fleetwing get repaired?, Will we be able to start our trip north on Friday", etc.)