Dragons Den
Rhiann Marie - Round the World
Stewart Graham
Fri 3 Dec 2010 14:59
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Friday 3rd December 2226 Local 1426
UTC
08:19.39S 119:11.52E
Have you noticed our Easting? With less than
120degrees left to go to the Greenwich Meridian we are actually two thirds of
the way round the world now!
Our pace has been intense these last weeks and I
think Trish is feeling the strain a little. The time of year also makes it hard
for her to be away from friends and especially family. The constant motion and
the heat plus hectic shore based exploring are adding to the
stress.
On passage last night from Timor I had an engine
room extractor fan pack in and in an operating engine room I had to disassemble
the unit for the generator and re-fit it to the main engine room extraction
ducting. I thought I was clever but just as I was finishing I remembered that
the generator was a 12V fan and the Engine room one was 24V although identical
in all other respects. But that was ok - for my efforts I nearly lost my
hearing and about 6 pounds in body weight - sweated out and pumped out through
the bilge pumps I suppose.... Don't tell the HSE at home what I have been doing
please they will have me extradited. Today I will try to rebuild the original
fan.
Later into the 270 mile flat calm engine driven
passage, about 2130 last night I heard a crunch and the engine sputter. The boat
was racked with excessive vibrations. My immediate reaction was that I had
run a fuel tank dry, and changed tanks in a flash. However it wasn't that
and the engine ran fine when the gearbox was disengaged.
I ran the boat astern to re-engage overdrive and
there was another strained clunk and still some vibration. Then it dawned on me.
We had wrapped something round the propeller. We certainly could not sail
as there was just over 1 knot of wind but we were 50 miles fom anywhere so if
push came to shove we could loll around untill first light when I could dive
under the boat and inspect the problem.
In any event having concluded we had something in
the prop, I checked and re-checked the shaft from inside the enigine room
and there were no problems. So we decided to limp on through the night, knowing
that if the prop was driving at all our Spur rope cutter would clear a path
through the debris for the prop which it did. Speed however was greatly
reduced and there was more vibration than there should have
been.
Our reward for soldiering on was having the
whole of the bay at Komodo to ourselves and also being the only visitors to the
island we were able to have a liesurely hike around the island to see the
dragons. This hike however has to be accompanied. We were accompanied by a young
warden armed only with a long forked stick to keep these beasts
away.
They were gruesome. About the size of a crocodile
and capable of running at 18 - 20kmph on raised legs. I took my speargun and
shot two of them.
Just joking - of course I didn't, but it was a
little nerve racking walking through the narrow paths in their inland
domain.
After stripping out the 50 metres of 14mm polyprop
rope bunched round the prop we engaged a couple of fishermen and bought a
few lobsters off them. For a whole 10 dollars. He wanted 50 at first
offer!
Then we decided to make another two hundred and
fifty mile passage the same night and buy ourselves an extra day
of R&R ath the Gilli Islands. (Strange term this as I figure Gilli
means island anyway...) We have been studying lonely planet and it says there is
great diving there.
So here we are under way again with an ETA of
Tomorrow night and 5 or 6 days in Lombok/Gilli an Bali to look forward to where
I can hopefully also get a few critical boat jobs done.
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