Also missing from the last post was a mention of two other problems we'd had after leaving Napier. We had a compressor pipe explode before Mahia, resulting in no fridge/freezer on the boat. There was a large bang followed by a hissing sound -- I happened to be downstairs so it only took a few seconds to find the shattered high-pressure pipe end flailing about under the starboard quarter-berth. Adrenaline levels subsided fairly fast, but not nearly as fast as they went up. Thankfully Vesna had also purchased ice with our supplies so we liked the chances of food staying edible for a few days. And I was oblivious to the nasty potential effects (largely an absence of oxygen) that can result from free freon gas, but didn't have any problems.
The fabulous food provided by Karens Marine Katering (sic) had pre-cooked meals vacuum-packed, so could well have been OK sans ice. So the compressor became just another item to add to the magic (ie never gets any smaller no matter what you do) list of fixes and tweaks. KMK are very kindly supplying fantastic food in quick-access and easily prepared packages, perfect for what we are doing, and the staff are just lovely.
Not long after that, after a great sunset over smooth water, the engine revs dropped for 5 seconds or so - just long enough for concerned glances to be exchanged. Then a discussion about whether possible further engine trouble should necessitate a return to Napier, 6 hours behind us. Engine ran beautifully during this discussion, we carried on. The a few minutes later same thing... Revs down to 1/3 normal, sounded OK and still driving the boat along but more slowly and no obvious explanation. More discussion, same outcome, and no further episodes over the next 12 hours. No worries, maybe some transient goop in a filter or something. All over.
From Gisborne to East Cape we had a beaut sunrise, several pods of dolphins of varying levels of excitability and interest in us. One pod we might have driven through while they were hunting ... swimming at high speed, lots of jumping, little interest in riding our bow or stern waves. In very light weather we took the wee shortcut between East Island and East Cape, looking forward to the light wind which had been coming from almost exactly our intended course being on our beam as we turned the corner. No such luck. The wind direction on this entire trip - even Wellington-Napier, as the astute blog reader will know of from previous posts - seemed to be almost entirely dictated by the direction our boat was pointing, rather than any geographical, marine or weather system influences.
So there was little interesting info in the maritime safety broadcasts from the weather perspective. But amongst the many other arcanely-named/numbered safety information broadcasts was one for 'Area Plenty' - the Bay of Plenty - involving live firing as part of military exercises. A look at the Almanac (no wonder you need one for Cat-2!) to see what that area number they referred to was ... and yikes that's most of the BoP. To avoid it completely we'd have to go south near both White Island and Mayor Islands, adding nearly 100 miles to the trip. Going north of it wasn't an option, hundreds of miles extra. Some quick calculations, and I worked out that we should enter the area at ~6pm (half an hour after the exercise finish time for the day) and exit it at about 6am, a couple of hours before it started again. That seemed like a sensible margin, so we headed straight for the Mercury Islands. We had the wind slightly off to one side of our course, so had a nice evening sail before the wind dropped again.
It was well after dark, in only light breeze but a moderate chop (guess which direction the chop and breeze was from...?) and well into the military exercise zone when the revs dropped. Then the engine developed a remarkable degree of independence and flexibility regarding revs and power output, despite the throttle being set to ~75% of full forward. The revs would stay low for minutes at a time (boatspeed 3-4 knots), then spend some time at ~50% (5.5 knots), then hum along (7 knots!) for 30-60 seconds, then repeat the cycle with no consistent order or timing. With the potential of being fired upon in the morning (OK so not really likely, but it makes a better story) we didn't like this very much. So there was frantic reading of 'diesel engine problem solver' and similar titles (engine running continuously but varying with a slow mania during all this time) while I confirmed it was almost certainly a fuel supply problem and the most likely 'lesions'. So I set about draining the water trap, changing filters, etc etc. Messy and difficult with the boat moving around and lit mostly by mouth-held torchlight ... with the net result that for 10 mins we couldn't start the engine at all. The low point was dropping the air bleed screw somewhere into the front part of the engine bay and hearing it bounce a couple of times on the way down, but no splash into the wee layer of diesel resulting from the filter changes at the bottom of the engine bay. There was a little muttering during the 10-minute search by torchlight.
Eventually I fixed the problems that I had initiated in trying to fix the first one, and returned it to exactly the same situation as before I started. There was no sensible option but to leave it running at a lower throttle setting, and use the sails to add as much speed as possible. We made it out of the war zone with about an hour to spare.
Every time the wind dropped out and we used the motor, it was the same. It never stopped, but didn't work properly either, except for a couple of hours of consistent running on the way into Auckland harbour. We sort of got used to it, and at least we had an engine that sort of worked.
Whenever we could sensibly sail, we did, and had some really great rides... in particular, Mercury Islands to Colville on Sunday evening. We were close-hauled, natch, but with the autohelm steering, CV gliding upwind in the groove towards the sunset at 6-7 knots in exactly the right direction, a warm breeze requiring only t-shirts and shorts, just two of us on board, and a nearly-cold-enough beer while reclining on the bean bag-- things were quite tolerable. We had seen a sunfish near Mercury Islands, and at East Cape a flying fish glide a good 200m past the boat.
The traditional end-of-journey rum and coke at 5.30am in our Westhaven Marina Berth didn't feel right but we had one anyway, I guess since both of us had an hour's sleep it was more a very late night than an early morning. We again had great service from the Marine industry. Ovlov Marine put us onto a good boat refrigeration company, and both Des from Cool-it and the Ovlov team went out of their way to get to the boat before we had to leave just after 3pm that day. Josh from North Sails was happy to pick up some sails that we wanted to have checked and serviced from the boat later.
So we'd made it to Auckland. Distance: 362.0 nautical miles; Elapsed Time: 61:23:10; Avg Speed: 5.9 kts;
Max Speed: 8.3 kts :-(
And the engine with the extra personality? Probably tiny crack in an old, tired fuel hose, not enough to leak diesel, but enough to suck a little air into the fuel system.
11 days to race start
Now you just listen to me TW. If you keep this up, things could get ugly... you realise that too much competition for the Wellington Yachting Writer of the Year Award could mean I have to send my boys over to 'have a talk with you'...
ReplyDeleteGreat stuff.