My note about this passage being uneventful was premature. Two days ago, in midafternoon, the oil light for the port motor started beeping. Having checked the oil that morning, this seemed odd. We turned off the engine and looked inside the engine compartment.

What we saw was lots and lots of oil. Sprayed, on the floor, in the bilge, all over. So that was the end of the port engine for this passage.

You might also remember my having mentioned that Michael and I thought we had filled the starboard engine’s fuel tank but it was showing 3/4 full the last time we looked at it. (I don’t even remember why we checked it.) Well, when we started the starboard engine (after a brief funeral for the port engine), we saw that the fuel tank was only *half* full.

Now this made no sense at all because we hadn’t had leakage problems before. It also made us feel horrible about dumping that much fuel into the water. In any event, we did a couple of things and decided to motor until the starboard tank was pretty low. If the leak seemed to continue at the same rate we were going to revert to the jerry can with two hoses method we had perfected during our first passage. 👍

What we did must have made an impact because the leak appears to have stopped. We decided it was safe to add three jerry cans of diesel to the tank yesterday. We will likely add more to get us to Djibouti.

We are happy that we are toting a lot of diesel.

Anywho . . . Michael and I spent a fair amount of time pumping the liquid out of the engine compartment. I went down into the engine compartment with the fluid extractor and Michael pumped the handle. We collected *five liters* of liquid. It appears that the engine is completely dry of oil. One of our contacts suspects a blown gasket.

What’s worse (?!) is that I made the mistake of wearing one of my favorite pairs of athletic shorts into the compartment. I clearly was NOT thinking! They now have an oil stain covering the entire right side on the back. 😭😭. I will still wear them. They are too cool to toss.

As of now, we are about 84 nm away from Djibouti. We might have to cut back our speed so we arrive after the sun rises. We already have the coordinates for the anchorage and have been in contact with our agent for about a week. We hope to find a slip in a marina cuz we still don’t have a dinghy. (Also 😭😭.).

We also hope to buy three new house batteries and get the engine looked at (again) and the leak. We might end up buying a new port engine.

We are going to need to buy a new refrigerator/freezer unit as well. In my opinion that cannot happen soon enough.

We would love to be able to find a used dinghy in Djibouti, but our hopes are not high.
So, we have a lot to do in Djibouti. I would love to go scuba diving and do some sightseeing.

In the meantime, we continued to motor in the Internationally Recommended Transit Corridor (until recently – we have now exited it). There must be some currents because we were changing our heading from 233° to 255° and all things in between overnight. The wind never changed directions and the seas were pretty steady.

At about noon today a military plane flew overhead. They hailed us on channel 16 and asked us to identify ourselves. We did (boat and Captain’s name). That was that.
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