We left Harwich at 03:30.

Very little wind so we motored out with Mabel the autohelm doing the driving.

All went well.

We even managed to cross the main TSS with only 1 small deviation to avoid a ship.

We were about 1 mile clear of the TSS when there was a clattering sound from under the cockpit sole and the engine sounded wrong!

1st move was to stop the engine and clear out the cockpit locker.

I thought that something had got mixed up with the propshaft coupling at the back of the engine.

Once I had got down to the back of the engine I found that the exhaust outlet had broken just before the water injection point.

This was going to be difficult to sort.

There was little wind but we put the main up to use what little there was to keep us clear of the TSS and hopefully move on towards Oostend.

We also called another YBW.com forumite, “Morgana” who had left for Oostend at the same time as us to let him know what was happening. 

I thought that we may be able to join the parts back together with a section of exhaust hose.

The hose is designed to be used in the wet section of the system, not before the water injection point. this area is a lot hotter.

We had to give it a try.

I cut a section out of the hose behind the water trap.

I thought that this was the correct diameter to fit the part remaining on the engine but I could not get it onto it.

there was a short section of hose that was a larger diameter between the rear of the exhaust outlet and the water trap.

I cut of a bit of this to try.

it was to big for the section on the engine but a perfect fit for the water outlet section.

There were 2 problems with this.

1. there was only a very short part of the water injection section before the inlet pipe  and we did not seem to have enough jubilee clips big enough to fit the bigger section hose.

After some head scratching I decided to cut a slot in the hose and allow it to go past the inlet pipe.

This meant we has plenty of pipe to clamp to and we could use a slightly undersize Jubilee clip.

Once we had forced a smaller diameter clip onto the other end we managed to clamp it to the outlet on the engine.

I then put all the rest of the system back together, crossed my fingers and a few other things and started the engine.

Water was being blown out of the stern as usual and there was no sign of any water leaks in the cockpit locker.

There was some signs of exhaust gases blowing out.

Ran the engine for 10 mins and checked that the hose was not melting.

Seemed o.k so we ran it aging for ½ an hour.

Seemed very hot but no major problems.

We decided to try sailing for a while to allow it to cool down.

2.25 knots under main and spinnaker.

It seemed that we would not be into Oostend until very late if we carried on like this.

I decided to push on, keeping an eye on the hose and keeping out of the cabin etc in case of carbon monoxide.

We let Morgana know we were on our way again.

He said that he had sorted a berth for us.

The hose held and we arrived in Oostend at 19:25, about an hour later that we would have.

Once we had moored up and sorted our selves out we made enquiries about a more permanent repair.

Another Forumite “Gupea” whe had come over on the same day said that he had an engineer coming to do some work for him the following morning.

The chap said that he could re-weld the thing.

He did so that evening.

Wonderful service!