Penelope has a brand new engine!! Why? Hmmm... back in January Roland took Penelope to Pender Island, and when he arrived there an oil leak had started - a pretty severe one. So he took the boat to Sidney where Gartside Marine checked things out. They found a number of issues: The head gasket was in poor shape, rings in one cylinder were letting oil leak past them (the oil eventually came out the exhaust pipe), several cylinders were impacted by their valves and scorched from overheating, the cylinders did not come up to the same level (possibly due to bad bearings or a bent connection rod), and one pre-combustion chamber was cracked. On top of that some other gaskets also were in need of repair since oil leaked into the bilge. We did not know the engine hours, but Gartside estimated them at about 4000 which would put this engine at the end of its life.
What to do? Look for yet another boat, or buy a new engine? We opted for the new engine. Delivery took a few weeks, but the engine was installed in mid-June, and Penelope came back to Victoria on June 25.
Penelope now has a BETA 16 engine, and at maximum RPM she can motor at 6 knots.
One more thing we need to do is to get a larger diameter cooling inlet at the next haulout.
Barry took the old engine home (in pieces) and then put it back together (without any big repairs). It is running again! It is now sitting in our driveway, and maybe someone will even buy it (not to use as the main engine on a boat, though!).