Gallows Bay,
Christiansted,
St. Croix, USVI
17.44.911N
64.41.908W

While I caught up on my blog posts, Dale joined Bruce in tearing the outboard apart to see what the problem was. They immediately discovered that the impeller was pretty worn and needed replacing. By lunchtime, when Dale came back to the boat they had pretty much concluded that one of the two head gaskets was probably the culprit which, of course, means really tearing into it.

Yesterday when we had checked into the marina, we had walked through the chandlery and spotted a brandy new 15 HP Mercury outboard just like ours. Today, Dale checked to see how much it would cost; it was several hundred less than we had estimated the day before. We discussed the pros and cons of buying a new one and decided that if all of our spares that we had purchased for our trip fit the new one, we might be better off biting the bullet and being certain of reliable transportation considering we were heading to even more remote destinations on the western side of the Caribbean before heading back home.

By the end of the day, after discussing the various options with Bruce, (who told us that the new one was just like the old one except that it didn’t have rust and worked) we decided to buy the new outboard and strip the old one of anything that could possibly be used on the new one, including the old cover. I prefer that it look pretty beat up, particularly now that its brand new.