We bought Dulcinea in July 2024 on her mooring in Gosport. We’d had an engineer look at the engine, a Volvo Penta MD22-50 with 120 saildrive, and were aware of problems – lots of leaks and burning oil so we negotiated accordingly and bought the boat. We knew that the boat had been pretty well unused since being returned to the UK by a delivery crew in 2020, and that it hadn’t been heavily used in the 5 years before that – being a holiday escape in Brittany for the owner and his wife. We couldn’t find out the hours the engine (original) had clocked up – when sold in 2015 the advert said 1590 hours and the display in the cockpit was dead. Changing the LCD in the display showed 1150 hours – so the display must have been replaced or reset at some time – adding the two together gives less than 3000 hours, which in the circumstances seemed reasonable. We thought the engine would, like all boat diesels, have suffered more from low usage and not working hard than from a hear life, and that it probably needed changing or removing and rebuilding. In the event, as we wanted to get on with using the boat and having a good five years of reliable use, we decided to have a new engine and saildrive fitted – fortunately the Volvo Penta D2-50 & 130 are almost a drop in replacement. At the same time we decided that a feathering propeller would be a nice thing to have, and ordered a Featherstream and a Gori rope cutter. As of November 2024 that work is scheduled for sometime soon.