Wednesday 13th enroute Las Perlas to La Libertas 04:32N 79:38W
Southern Princess
John & Irene Hunt
Wed 13 Feb 2008 18:01
After a couple of days in the Las Perlas, we are
now heading for La Libertas in Ecuador. Not much to report from yesterday except
for a very worrying night for your truly. When we started the motor yesterday
the exhaust was puffing white smoke (Tony off Storyteller suggested that a new
pope might have been elected!) and as a result we consulted all the diesel books
we had on board which made dire predictions as to what the problem might be. But
the smoke had the consistency of steam and all the instruments, oil pressure,
engine temperature etc were all within normal limits so we kept
going.
Now the only thing which was different was that I
had cleaned out the raw water filter while in Isla San Jose and both John Gilder
(Storyteller) and I worried about what might of caused the problem. Beaut thing
about having identical boats is that we can compare.
I thought air might be getting into the system
around the raw water filter seal and pulled it apart again and sealed it with
Vaseline. Seemed to work for a while and then the smoke was back again. Off
engine once more and pulled the filter apart again to find that the seal was
floating in the filter bowl. Discussed this with JG over the VHF and he
highlighted that the seal on Storyteller was part of the filter bowl and not a
separate item. And there in lay the problem. Once I had married the seal to the
filter bowl properly, re-installed it the white smoke disappeared.
11:00 Storyteller has just hauled in the biggest
mahi mahi I have seen for a while! Our fishing line went straight over the stern
but no luck yet.
We have no wind and our weather forecaster says we
are motoring into a long line of thunderstorms. We saw lots of distant lightning
last night so something is happening out there.
And at 12:30 here is our Mahi Mahi
He is 1450mm long (4' 6") for the
non metric
Been so busy I missed the sched so will
have to catch up. Talk to you soon.
JH