Once upon a time (last Wednesday) on a hot, sultry day on a mooring buoy in Bora Bora, the crew of Amelie were completing their last minute inspections of the boat before venturing out to sea to Tonga (1,300 nm). The crew (always prepared!) checked the generator oil, fan belt, wasting anode and impeller and happily turned on the generator to test its function.
The generator, engine and sails are our lifelines - the generator runs the watermaker, cooker and charges our elderly batteries. Gertie the generator fired into life but after about 10 minutes stopped. We had forgotten to switch back on the seawater intake and the cut off switch halted the generator to prevent any further overheating and damage, Alas the impeller was in bits - not a big problem as between us we extracted all the pieces from the heat exchanger and fitted a new one. The generator failed to fire up. Eddie from Oyster advised us to press the reset button - we didn't know we had one! Stephen went off to collect Eddie from the shore and within seconds, using only his primary digit, the generator started. Relieved that the generator was working but delayed by all the fiddling about we postponed our leaving until first light the next day. A real hardship as we had a nice supper ashore.
The following day our first port of call was the fuel dock. We did have half a tank of diesel but like to have a full tank for longer trips for all eventualities. We were told they were all sold out which, at first, produced the first expletives of the trip but we later discovered this was a blessing in disguise since those that filled up the day before, from the near empty fuel station, were getting problems with dirty fuel and water
Day 2 of the trip we discovered that two of our shrouds had broken single strands of the stainless steel wire. We would need to nurse our rig and keep a careful eye on further developments to make sure the situation didn't worsen. We also put on the running backstays to take some pressure off the shrouds (also helps support the mast if they were to fail).
The next day, whilst creating a seafood risotto the Yankee sail took off from the sheet which had parted at the end of the spinnaker pole. Remarkably we were prepared for this and had made up the lazy Yankee sheet on the same side as the working sheet and were able to quickly furl away the sail and get on with our supper plans. We waited for daylight before dropping the Yankee and retying the sheets.
In a very roly sea Debbie started to look off-colour and her appetite dropped (a sure sign of impending doom!) and even the skipper had a dodgy tummy. As the next couple of days rolled by there was no improvement, the first mate was very sleepy, not much use to the skipper and becoming confused (the skipper thought this was normal!). The skipper did however have a brain wave (also hard to imagine!) that perhaps we were suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning. Why didn't the alarm warn us?! We had not been running the main engine but had made frequent use of the generator and bearing in mind our earlier run in with Gertie, we investigated her first. What we found when removing the sound proof casing was soot, soot and more soot. Yes, we had a bout of carbon monoxide poisoning. The connection from the exhaust manifold to the exhaust elbow had failed and the exhaust fumes were no longer leaving the boat. Once again we had this covered as we had a spare exhaust elbow and together with calls to our Westerbeke guru, Bob from Crazy Daisy, we set about to replace the elbow. By now it was of course dark. We did remember to switch off the seawater before taking apart the plumbing but had forgotten to switch off the power supply. When the skipper commenced removing the screws to the heat sensor a rather large spark erupted from the space and the first mate scrambled to switch off the power. Apart from that we were doing pretty well! Instructions attached to the new elbow informed us of the need for a high temperature sealant to secure the connection of the gasket between manifold and elbow - bugger what's that? Another phone call to Bob suggested that without gasket sealant the first mate should scrub both surfaces scrupulously clean - and then pray. The skipper buried himself in the 'odds and sods' bag only to discover we did have the Red high temperature sealant after all, he then remembered he had only just bought it in Bora Bora as a gasket maker - the prayer had been answered even before we had prayed. Meanwhile first mate was scrubbing. Out came the old elbow, in went the new, electrics on, seawater on and then .......... nothing!
Scratching our heads we then remembered the spark. We had blown the fuse - where are the spare fuses? We were prepared again and our iStorage inventory program on the iPad directed us straight to them - Simples! New fuse = generator now running. We charged up the batteries and started our night watch slightly later than planned. Some hours later while first mate was on watch the troublesome automatic bilge pump came back to life and on checking the bilges running water was heard - generator here we go again? Correct - the seawater was pouring from one of the hoses attached to the exhaust elbow. Our friend Bob was called again since any new hose was several days away in Tonga and he suggested we find something to join a separated hose. The search commenced for some steel piping to enable us to cut away the split part of the hose and restore its length with piping in the middle. Breakfast was helping our thinking process as we motor sailed to restore charge to our elderly batteries - suddenly the mainsail took off from the end of the boom. The stitching was shot and we rolled it away to await some attention in Tonga. We looked at each other and laughed insanely - what else can you do?
To summarise that at that point we had no generator and therefore no hot food, no watermaking and no aircon - but could charge the batteries with the main engine and we also had no mainsail but could, in enough wind, sail on Yankee alone - at that moment we had no wind. Tonga 370 nm away. Replenished by breakfast we searched our spares list and fell upon plumbing for a new tap to serve remineralised water from the watermaker - not yet fitted. We found the ideal length of stainless steel piping and hey presto we were only a mainsail down and Debbie could have hot food and limitless showers. And yes it did work.
On a very high note Stephen (after 6 months of patience) successfully caught an Acanthocybium solandri (no its not a tropical disease) - a 4 foot Wahoo - guess what's for supper ton ight. Picture attached - not photo shopped!
If anyone needs an electrician, plumber, generator engineer or advise on fishing - please seek out an expert!
So much for plain sailing but from a tired, hungry yet elated Amelie
We'll be in touch soon.