Day 16 Position Report 09 28.59 S 159 11.69 W 1200CIT
Mark_needler
Professional Skipper
Sun 25 Sep 2011 22:24
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We're currently 74 Nms off
Penrhyn at present and have being experiencing problems with fuel starvation
since 0300 this morning, probably due to the head winds and the 2 to 3 mtrs sea
we are heading into shacking the dirt in the bottom of the tanks up. At 0830 we
changed the fuel filters are topped up with diesel and everything was going fine
until about a hour ago when the engine revs started to spasmodically drop, even
stopping the engine completely at some points.
Having thought about
the problem I now think its more serious than blocked fuel filters, I
suspect that there is diesel bug in one or both of the tanks. My guess is the
the main feeding tank the Starboard side is the main culprit and have isolated
that from supplying the engine and it has at present been working nicely being
fed by the port tank in isolation. (fingers crossed and everything else we can
cross!)
It has been running for
approximately 3/4 hour without an hiccup but I'm trying not to speak too
soon.
We have enough fuel in
that tank to make it into Penrhyn and when we are there I can drain the
Starboard tank and remove the inspection hatch and clean it out. The only down
side to that is that It is full and I'll need to drain up to 500 ltrs of fuel
out of it first.
Then I will remove the
inspection hatch and clean out the diesel bug, put it back together and then
filter the old fuel back into the tank again.
All this, on one of the
outer islands in the Northern Cooks Islands!!! Well where there is a will
there is a way, TIS (this is sailing!!)
Our Current ETA is 0100 to
0230 Monday Morning so if Jacqui is reading this can you arrange a meeting
provisionally for 0900 Monday ~ thanks M
Oh well that's enough of
our boring stuff I'll probably post our arrival some time on Monday after I get
a good nights Kip!
Thanks for reading
Mark
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