30th July Friday to Villane but back to Crouesty !

The plan was to sail to the Villane Estuary and lock through to a non tidal waterway. However about a mile out of the Morbihan, we realised that we had a serious problem with the engine gear control mechanism. We were unable to select neutral which prevented us from starting the engine. This was a broken gear control cable mechanism and trying to moor up a 12 ton yacht without engine power is not realistic !

We made the decision to return to Port Crouesty in the Morbihan estuary where we knew that there were full marina facilities. This involved several radio requests to the marina in “Franglish” to explain that we had no engine and could they provide a tow into the marina. We sailed the hour to Port Crouesty and were relieved that on arrival at the harbour entrance, there was indeed a friendly French man in a powerful Pilot boat to tow us into the marina.
We were lucky that by now about 4pm on Friday Afternoon, I managed to track down the the Yanmar Whitlock specialist in Crouesty. Initially there was lots of shoulder shrugging when looking at the Whitlock gear control system. Comments about ordering parts form the UK and repairs a week or so later. Then after a rummage through some back room spares a dusty part of the correct dimension was found. Claude came down to the boat fitted the parts and by 6pm and 70 Euro later all was back as it should be.