Contrary to what we thought yesterday, we didn't "definitely go to Escondido". I poked and prodded the Yanmar diesel engine for several hours yesterday, but nothing seemed to help. For those who missed the last update: the engine won't produce max power under load, tends to overheat at what should be reasonable RPMs, and has been burning oil.

We left Rio San Juan anchorage last night around 8PM. The swells really made life miserable all day yesterday, and I was even more miserable crawling around the engine compartment while the boat was rocking side-to-side. We were very happy to get underway. But once we started the engine we were getting great clouds of white smoke out the exhaust! So now we add burning oil to our engine woes.

We made the very tough decision to head back to Luperon, rather than continue on to Escondido and jump off for Puerto Rico. We had a lovely 50-mile motor-sail back here, trying to run the engine at the lowest RPMs possible, arriving this morning around 7AM. We're now looking for some local expertise in diesel engines, but so far it's been discouraging.

Other than that we're happy and healthy and would really like to get to Puerto Rico, but it looks like even if we get the diesel fixed we'll be stuck here until at least the weekend, due to the high winds we're seeing.