Handicapable...

Rhiann Marie - Round the World
Stewart Graham
Sun 19 Sep 2010 01:29
Sunday September 19th 1108 Local 0008 UTC   
 
16:06.82S 168:07.63E
 
As I know that there are only two of you reading this and as we have come to know each other over the last year I can tell you a very personal secret. One which I know you will not tell anyone else.
 
I have been born with some serious disabilities. I mean I just dont have some of the abilities that almost all other people have. Now that I have told you that, which has been playing on my mind for some time I can tell you a story from the last few days.
 
We hauled anchor at 0500 on Thursday in Port Vila and set off for Epi some seventy miles away. The intention was to make an afternoon and overnight stop there, before sailing on the next day to Ambrym. We sailed all day until we reached the westermost headland of Epi, with 8 miles to go to our anchorage. There the wind just completely died. There was really just a great big confused hole in the wind due to the various influences on the wind cancelling each other out. No problem. I reached for the key, and fired up the engine. There was a very strong counter current round the headland and we were making laboured progress over the ground.
 
Then the engine died. I dashed down below to the engine room guessing some sort of fuel problem. Trish asked something about fuel .... whatever.
That is one of my first severe disabilities. A complete inability to listen when I am brilliantly and clearly focussed on the way ahead. Not just a small inability you understand - complete blinkered, stuck in my own little vacuum, deaf.
 
I dashed down and checked the fuel separator. It was absolutely full of black guck. We must have got bad fuel I quickly and brilliantly deduced. Up with the sails and off we drifted to find some wind. Having found the wind, we were faced with a beat to an anchorage where we could sail into. That was accomplished in text book fashion, but unfortunately only with the crew of one small boat to witness our impressive sail upwind to drop anchor right behind them and fall back into the sand pocket in the coral bound shore. Quite chuffed with that really...
 
We immediately launched the RIB to set Trish off to survey our swinging circle to ensure there were no keel interfering bommies around. While Trish was off surveying, I switched the separators over and bled the engine all the way through to the injectors. Very smug with my mechanical abilities I waved Trish back to the boat and hauled anchor to head off to our original destination at the North end of Epi. We were headed there, as we had heard there was a resident Dugong there and we wanted to see him. A Dugong is a seacow - sort of a big daft mammal type of thing.
 
We set of under engine, with it running as sweet as a nut again, to drive through the hole in the wind at the headland. After rounding the headland and into some wind ... phut, phut, phut. Damn! 
 
However at least there was some wind again so, I left the engine for now and like pro's we worked the boat hard up wind tacking up to the shore and working the wind shifts to our advantage. As we appraoched the anchorage there were about eight boats there and it was now just about dark.
 
As we were coming in full tilt under sail, there were quite a few other yachties out on deck staring at us and photographing us as we tacked up through them to survey the anchorage before bearing away again to come round to make our final approach. We made this approach under jib in very poor light, right to the spot we wanted before backing the jib to help Rhiann Marie fall back down on her anchor chain. Two text book sail up to anchor manouvres in one day - with no engine to fall back on! Very impressive I thought to myself, barely able to contain myself from strutting to the bow with the deck lights on and taking a bow.  On the way into the anchorage the Dugong was swimming along side us snorting away - I thought it sounded like he was laughing, but I didn't know at what. Perhaps he was laughing at a big daft mammal type of thing.
 
Oh - before I forget, one of my other disabilities is that unbelievably, I have been born without the modesty gene. I mean there is not a single trace of it at all in my body. This is something almost all other people have been blessed with but clearly I was not listening when I was told to join the modesty gene queue ...........         
 
Anyway while still basking in my genius at diagnosing the bad fuel problem, bleeding the engine through and then sailing up into not one, but two anchorages, I thought I would just go straight down to the engine room and sort out the engine, while I was on a roll. Just on the way past, I thought I would check the fuel guage to see how much fuel I may have to drain through the system to get rid of the bad fuel ........ Click on with the switch ........ the needle did not move. Click again. Nothing.
 
I couldn't believe it. I stupidly, stupidly ( not brilliantly or by any stroke of genius or in any way cleverly ) had run the tank dry.
 
Not so clever now eh! Bloody idiot. That however was not really the biggest issue. The fact is that what Trish had apparently asked me when I dashed off in my headlong rush to confirm my suspicions about dirty fuel, was "have we run out of fuel?"
 
Humiliating. All that effort I had spent on self congratulation; misplaced. Damn!
 
The next day I laboured hard to get all the dirt and air out of the system which took several attempts. When I confidently and finally called Trish to fire up the engine it did. However there was no self praise for my efforts just a little bit of humble pie. After cleaning everything up and washing out the engine room I had perhaps just hoped that Trish might just say "wow what a great job you did getting that engine all sorted out again" - but no.
 
What she said was the traditional thanks a man gets when he has demonstrated intelligence and hard graft (confidence coming back just a little bit again ..) to fix something in a dirty job. " Aw look at the state of my towel -did you actually wash your hands before you used it?" 
 
Some thanks, but no more than this now listening, immodest guy deserved.
 
I have another disability as well .......... but I can't remember what it is.