NZ - A Double YUK!!

Aurora_b
Mike and Liz Downing
Sat 11 Dec 2010 09:45
They have a lot of jellyfish here, big brown ones, bigger than the ones in Tonga, but that didn't stop one finding its way up the generator intake! Happened this morning and the filter was covered with goo again - far worse than in Tonga. Here they have much longer tentacles and it took 3 goes at cleaning the filter, starting the generator, stopping it and cleaning again, to get all the tentacles out. Our friends said we were unlucky for it to happen in Tonga and we couldn't believe it when it happened again here. We hate jellyfish! The water here in the estuary is very murky - you can barely see below the surface - so you can't always see how many are about. The water is also cold - so no going underneath to check if the intake was still blocked. The generator is working again now (on our last impeller) and from now on when running it one of us will be on deck on jellyfish patrol!  Apparently the dolphins round here consider jellyfish a delicacy and come up the estuary every so often and have a feast. So we're looking for a tame dolphin to do guard duty around the boat.
 
The generator's sea water filter - not surprising that no water got through!