The next day we decided it was time to head towards the River Vilaine and to Shadow's new home at La Roche Bernard. We would need to leave near high water when the bridge would lift allowing access from the Bassin de la Saline where we were and the lock to the Bassin a Flot would open. We got ready to slip our lines in good time and waited.
At the published time someone came to the bridge, closed the road barriers and ... nothing. He opened the barriers and walked away again. At this point we were unsure what was happening and a couple of French Boats had slipped and were milling round. After what seemed like a long wait, the bridge was opened and the other boats were leaving so we quickly started the engine, slipped our lines and followed them out.
There was a reasonable SW wind when we left the harbour heading for the Chaussee de Beniguet passage NW of the Ile de Houat. We were motoring at first preparing to turn into wind to hoist the mainsail when the engine overheat alarm went off. After the initial five second panic we turned the engine off, unfurled the Genoa and put us on a safe course North of East to give us time to sort ourselves out.
The problem was that the engine seacock was closed. We'd had some weed in the engine intake strainer and I had stupidly neglected to re-open the seacock after I had cleaned it out. In my rush to leave Le Palais when the bridge and lock had opened I hadn't done the normal check that exhaust water was coming out of the back of the boat. Needless to say the impeller was shredded. At least it was easy to fix - a change of impeller, check the water flow and on we continued.
We spent two days in Le Crouesty giving us chance to visit the supermarket and for me to clean out the bits of impeller in the eat exchanger as well as buy a spare impeller ( a genuine Volvo impeller at genuine Volvo prices).
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