After two weeks on beautiful Elba, I continued north along the Italian west coast. Around 15 knots of wind made me decide to try for Pisa, 60 miles away. It took me 13 hours with the wind from behind all the time. It died out a bit in the evening, so the last hour I went for the engine to come to the anchorage in river Arno before dark.

After I had made sure I had a good holding close to the north shore, I went down to check the engine. Just to find that it was very hot. Obviously the alarm for the oil temperature does not work. I hoped the problem with the heat exchanger had been fixed when I was on Elba. There was some very small holes in the riser that I had welded for me at the shipyard in Cala di Mola, but it seems it is a more serious problem. I think the broken injector cap on my way to Saint-Raphael some month ago was a symptom of this.

This morning when I woke up, I started to check the impeller. No problem there, but when i started the engine there was no cooling water coming out. I switch off immediately, checked the impeller again, it was intact, checked that the sea water reaches the pump, which it does. And the impeller seemed to have moved between the checks. No leakage of coolant from the heat exchanger. I took the riser from the exchanger to see if there was some blockage there, but it looked fine. I have no idea what the problem is, but I am pretty sure I will be stuck here in Arno for some time. There is plenty of small ship yards along the south shore, so I talked with two of them, but none of them had any time to help me. Some others were closed, so I hope to find someone tomorrow or Monday. I am worried that the engine has been damaged from this going on for I don´t know how long. I have a bad feeling that it will be expensive. As it is now I can´t move the boat at all, it has to towed to one of the yards.

And the weather does not show any signs of improvement either, it is very extreme to be in May. The other day Corsica had 25 cm of snow, as low as at 600 meters altitude. Here it started to rain this morning, and will continue for some more days.

I will try to make the best of it, and do some touristing on the bike when (if?) the rain stops. Have to see the leaning tower of course, and the historic center of nearby Livorno shall be worth a visit I heard. And a lot of beautiful scenery in the Tuscan countryside of course. There are worse places to get stuck in.

PS/ And to make the misery complete, I am out of gas, I just realised when I was going to take my evening cup of "infusion". I knew it wasn´t much left but I hoped to make it to France, where I can change the bottle at the nearest Intermarché. I have no idea what system they have in Italy, where to get a bottle and to what cost. The force is not with me for the moment.